Strategic Plan(ning) for Organizations: Reviewing, Refining, Repeating

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Proper alignment between your values, your vision, and your company is important in steering your company. Making strategy a process rather than a statement is a key to success.

Focus on the process, not the plan

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About the Author

Theo EtzelW. Theodore “Theo” Etzel III is the author of Invest Your Heartbeats Wisely: Practical, Philosophical, and Principled Leadership Concepts for Business and Life. He’s a native Floridian and president and CEO of Conditioned Air which he grew from a $2.7 million operation to a $46 million, 330-person organization.

What You Need to Take Your Company into the Global Marketplace

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What You Need to Take Your Company into the Global Marketplace
Photo courtesy of Pixabay

A lot of people like to develop their companies into national brands. But, then they are unsure of how to grow or expand any further. Becoming an international brand is really a sign that you have ‘made it’. So many business owners are unsure how to take their companies to this coveted next level. These are just a few of the things necessary to take your company into the global marketplace.

Vision

Expanding a brand and taking it international is an exact science. It needs to be done properly at the first time of asking. It’s essential that you get it right so you have a successful transition. The ways to do this is to have a strong and clear vision of what you want to achieve. All business owners need to have a vision, and that should be applied here as well. Whether you’re trying to launch a product like a rock star or come up with a business plan, you need vision. With the right vision, a person can accomplish anything. And by working towards your business vision, you will find success in the foreign marketplace.

Money

One thing you will need when it comes to international expansion is money, and lots of it. The cost of running a business is high, but that’s the price entrepreneurs pay for working for themselves. But, the costs of taking a company into the global marketplace are even higher. Sometimes it will be necessary to take out a business loan to help with the transition. Visiting the Business Lender Match website and other sites provide information on business loans. You shouldn’t attempt to globalize your company without having the necessary capital behind you.

Diverse Staff

When attempting to crack the foreign market it’s important to equip your business accordingly. One of the best courses of action to take would be to ensure a diverse staff base. Think about how beneficial it’s going to be to grow the business in a country where you have people who understand the language and culture. This is so essential in helping you succeed and tackle any issues you may face from the global marketplace. So try to start integrating these staff into the business as soon as you can.

Versatility

It pays in the business world to be as versatile as possible. The best businesses are those who grow through evolution and adaptation. It’s pretty clear that the world is changing at a rapid rate. And, for your business to succeed it will need to change with the industry, and the economy. So, always attempt to ensure you have the most versatile business you possibly can. This is the key to how you develop and grow. In the foreign marketplace, it’s even more pivotal to be adaptable and versatile. You may need to change elements of your brand in order to succeed so you must be prepared to do that.

There comes a time in business when it is necessary for growth and expansion. Many companies reach this juncture but are unaware of how to proceed because they haven’t planned. If you harbor ambitions of cracking that elusive foreign market anytime soon so you should plan your strategy as soon as possible.

New World Companies: The Future Of Capitalism

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How does a good company generate value in society? How do the leaders of these new world companies reshape and remake our families’ available goods, our friendship networks, and the many smaller firms that support them?

As a management consultant to over a hundred firms in the last thirty years, my team and I have worked with global companies such as Toyota, Suncor, Siemens, and FedEx, to name a few, to help them transform into new world companies – companies ready to take on the challenges of today’s global economy. In doing this, I derived a way to describe how companies mature by seeing the process as a symbolic clock of corporate competitiveness. As this concept evolved, I came to focus not on the clock itself, but on what it represents: time. Furthermore, I’ve broken down the time periods into segments that represent significant stages in the life of a global business. I often refer to these timeframes as “urgencies,” because, as I view it, corporations must accomplish the business goals outlined within each time period if they are to be successful.

Throughout the years, I have revised my description of these timeframes in a company’s life to take into account the emergence of what I call social response capitalism. I became increasingly aware of the financial ramifications of social response capitalism while working with new world companies. I came to see how each company contributes to this most important new business movement in decades, and why this evolution is crucial to the health of any company – whether a large global corporation or a small regional family business.

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About the Author

Bruce PiaseckiBruce Piasecki, PhD, is president and founder of AHC Group, Inc., a management consulting firm specializing in energy, materials, and environmental corporate matters, and is author of New World Companies: The Future of Capitalism. This article is adapted from material in his new book.

For more information visit ahcgroup.com.

5 Things Every Modern Entrepreneur Needs

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Amid the release of data revealing that the economic outlook among U.S. small business owners had finally stabilized, there’s cause for entrepreneurs to be optimistic. Whether or not that outlook begins to uptick not only depends upon how agile, adaptable, creative and resourceful entrepreneurs can be in planning for, or reacting to, market conditions, revenue and brand-building opportunities and other key concerns, but also how well they maintain a forward-thinking mindset.

Towards this end, tomorrow’s smart and successful entrepreneur will have their bases well-covered on these five fronts in particular:

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About the Author

Brian GreenbergBrian Greenberg is a multi-faceted entrepreneur who has founded and now spearheads multiple online businesses. He currently co-owns and operates three entrepreneurial companies with his father, Elliott Greenberg, which have each flourished for over 10 years: www.WholesaleJanitorialSupply.com, www.TouchFreeConcepts.com and www.TrueBlueLifeInsurance.com.

The Big Picture of Business – The Future Has Moved… and Left No Forwarding Address.

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Futurism is one of the most misunderstood concepts. It is not about gazing into crystal balls or reading tea leaves. It is not about vendor ‘solutions’ that quickly apply band-aid surgery toward organizational symptoms. Futurism is not an academic exercise that borders on the esoteric or gets stuck in the realm of hypothesis.

Futurism is an all-encompassing concept that must look at all aspects of the organization… first at the Big Picture and then at the pieces as they relate to the whole. One plans for business success through careful strategy.

Futurism is a connected series of strategies, methodologies and actions which will poise any organization to weather the forces of change. It is an ongoing process of evaluation, planning, tactical actions and benchmarking accomplishments. Futurism is a continuum of thinking and reasoning skills, judicious activities, shared leadership and an accent upon ethics and quality.

Quotes on The Future

  • “The future ain’t what it used to be.” Yogi Berra
  • “The future is not a gift. It is an achievement.” Robert F. Kennedy
  • “I never think of the future. It comes soon enough. The distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.” Albert Einstein
  • “Tomorrow is another day.” Margaret Mitchell, Gone With the Wind
  • “The future will one day be the present and will seem as unimportant as the present does now.” W. Somerset Maugham
  • “You ain’t heard nothing yet, folks.” Al Jolson in The Jazz Singer (1927)
  • “I like the dreams of the future better that the history of the past.” Thomas Jefferson
  • “The fellow who can only see a week ahead is always the popular fellow, for he is looking with the crowd. But the one that can see years ahead, he has a telescope but he can’t make anybody believe that he has it.” Will Rogers
  • “The only way to discover the limits of the possible is to go beyond them into the impossible. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. Arthur C. Clarke, Technology and the Future
  • “The best way to predict the future is to invent it.” Alan Kay
  • “The best thing about the future is that it comes one day at a time.” Abraham Lincoln
  • “There is always one moment in childhood when the door opens and lets the future in.” Graham Greene
  • “Upper classes are a nation’s past; the middle class is its future.” Ayn Rand
  • “The empires of the future are the empires of the mind.” Winston Churchill
  • “The future belongs to those who prepare for it today.” Malcolm X””
  • “All human situations have their inconveniences. We feel those of the present but neither see nor feel those of the future; and hence we often make troublesome changes without amendment, and frequently for the worse.” Benjamin Franklin
  • “It is because modern education is so seldom inspired by a great hope that it so seldom achieves great results. The wish to preserve the past rather that the hope of creating the future dominates the minds of those who control the teaching of the young.” Bertrand Russell
  • “Many people think that if they were only in some other place, or had some other job, they would be happy. Well, that is doubtful. So get as much happiness out of what you are doing as you can and don’t put off being happy until some future date.” Dale Carnegie
  • “Look not mournfully into the Past. It comes not back again. Wisely improve the Present. In is thine. Go forth to meet the shadowy Future, without fear, and a manly heart.” Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Futurism, The Future

I offer nine of my own definitions for the process of capturing and building a shared Vision for organizations to chart their next 10+ years. Each one gets progressively more sophisticated:

  1. Futurism: what you will do and become… rather than what it is to be. What you can and are committed to accomplishing…rather than what mysteriously lies ahead.
  2. Futurism: leaders and organizations taking personal responsibility and accountability for what happens. Abdicating to someone or something else does not constitute Futurism and, in fact, sets the organization backward.
  3. Futurism: learns from and benefits from the past… a powerful teaching tool. Yesterdayism means giving new definitions to old ideas…giving new meanings to familiar premises. One must understand events, cycles, trends and subtle nuances because they will recur.
  4. Futurism: seeing clearly your perspectives and those of others. Capitalizing upon change, rather than becoming a by-product of it. Recognizing what change is and what it can do for your organization.
  5. Futurism: an ongoing quest toward wisdom. Commitments to learning, which creates knowledge, which inspire insights, which culminate in wisdom. It is more than just being taught or informed.
  6. Futurism: ideas that inspire, manage and benchmark change. The ingredients may include such sophisticated business concepts as change management, crisis management and preparedness, streamlining operations, empowerment of people, marketplace development, organizational evolution and vision.
  7. Futurism: developing thinking and reasoning skills, rather than dwelling just upon techniques and processes. The following concepts do not constitute Futurism by themselves: sales, technology, re-engineering, marketing, research, training, operations, administration. They are pieces of a much larger mosaic and should be seen as such. Futurism embodies thought processes that create and energize the mosaic.
  8. Futurism: watching other people changing and capitalizing upon it. Understanding from where we came, in order to posture where we are headed. Creating organizational vision, which sets the stage for all activities, processes, accomplishments and goals. Efforts must be realistic, and all must be held accountable.
  9. Futurism: the foresight to develop hindsight that creates insight into the future.

About the Author

Hank MoorePower Stars to Light the Business Flame, by Hank Moore, encompasses a full-scope business perspective, invaluable for the corporate and small business markets. It is a compendium book, containing quotes and extrapolations into business culture, arranged in 76 business categories.

Hank’s latest book functions as a ‘PDR of business,’ a view of Big Picture strategies, methodologies and recommendations. This is a creative way of re-treading old knowledge to enable executives to master change rather than feel as they’re victims of it.

Power Stars to Light the Business Flame is now out in all three e-book formats: iTunes, Kindle, and Nook.