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FROM THE FOUNDER
Don’t turn yours into a joke by getting the wrong help and taking the wrong direction with revising your strategic plan. Tis the season – for updating business plans
T here are countless business strategic planning consultants and experts out there (although admittedly fewer with concentrated experience in the AEC business), and most all of them have some sort of a buzzword-laden process that they want to employ. But when it comes to strategic planning assistance, the only thing that matters is results. Did the planning effort put the firm on a new growth and market dominance trajectory or not?
Mark Zweig
Of course you won’t know that for a while. It could be a year or more after your plan is done before you find out the real results of your planning effort. What matters most isn’t the plan itself but rather the implementation of it and what happens with the business after the planning is done. One cannot blame the mediocrity of most business plans entirely on the outsiders who helped craft them. The firm owners themselves are ultimately responsible for whatever it is they create and adopt for a plan. The firm owners are also responsible for implementing the plans. That said, a truly great plan IS more likely to generate excitement in the people who make up the company. If well-crafted, it is more likely to be followed. And if implementation of the plan shows signs of working early enough, that is going to help reinforce the plan and build momentum, and get even more traction for the plan as time goes on. Competent help here from a real business planning expert may not be a requirement of the planning process but definitely can be valuable.
I have been working with companies in our business for 44-plus years now – as an owner, manager, board member, and consultant. I have worked on and seen so many different plans and planning processes – I could probably fill a thousand-page book with all of the case studies of real businesses I have worked with over my career. And the truth is this – processes can help but anyone can go through a process and still end up with a lousy plan. It really boils down to a few fundamental things. Here they are: 1. Understanding the people involved. It is foolhardy to think you can design a business plan for “what’s best” regardless of the people you already have in the organization. Your people are your opportunity and your constraint. And the owners of the business are the most important people of all. Whenever I have helped any company with their business planning, I have spent an inordinate amount of time getting to
See MARK ZWEIG, page 6
THE ZWEIG LETTER NOVEMBER 11, 2024, ISSUE 1561
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