Our Approach to Strategic Planning

The age-old truth of successful businesses is often characterized in the phrase, “Plan your Work, Work your Plan!” The truth is, plans come in many forms and faces.  From the simple to the complex, planning is a form of road-mapping, going from point “A” to point “B” to Point “C” to our desired Outcome, End or Result.

Plans generally fall into one of three formats:

• Short-Term Plans
• Long-Term Plans
• Strategic Plans

The common element of each is that they are thought through in advance. For it is equally true that, “The man who flies by the seat of his pants is most likely to lose his shorts!” For failing to plan is truly planning to FAIL!

“Over the river and through the woods, to Grandmother’s House we go!” is a classic example of short term planning/thinking.

“I want to visit every state capital in the United States by the time I am 60 years!” is an example of long term planning/thinking.

“Our Company will explore the Universe, to go where no Man has gone before!” is an example of STRATEGIC planning/thinking.

Great Plains Benefits Group, Inc. has been in the business of facilitating its Client’s planning/ thinking journeys for nearly 20 years. Banks, Agri-Businesses, Manufacturers, Political Sub-Divisions, Developmental Disabled Providers, Medical Providers, Contractors, Business Associations and Co-Operatives have partnered with Great Plains Benefits Group, Inc. to train their leadership, gather their data, ASK the Right QUESTIONS, challenge their assumptions and bring them to the table of planning/thinking to collectively chart the short-term, long-term and strategic road maps.

Among the Clients we have been privileged to serve are:

ü  The Bismarck Cancer Center – Mr. Kenneth Dykes, Executive Director

ü  Larson Grain Company, LaMoure, ND – Mr. Ross Fugleberg, CEO

ü  HIT, Inc., Mandan, ND – Mr. Mike Remboldt, Executive Director

ü  BNC Bank, Bismarck, ND – Mr. Greg Cleveland, Chairman of the Board

ü  AgriCover, Inc., Jamestown, ND – Mr. Bryan Miller, COO

The key components of 'strategic planning' include an understanding of the vision, mission, values and strategies. The vision and mission are often captured in a Vision Statement and Mission Statement.

• Vision: outlines what the organization wants to be, or how it wants the world in which it operates to be (an "idealised" view of the world). It is a long-term view and concentrates on the future. It can be emotive and is a source of inspiration. For example, a charity working with the poor might have a vision statement which reads "A World without Poverty."
• Mission: Defines the fundamental purpose of an organization or an enterprise, succinctly describing why it exists and what it does to achieve its vision. For example, the charity above might have a mission statement as "providing jobs for the homeless and unemployed".
• Values: Beliefs that are shared among the stakeholders of an organization. Values drive an organization's culture and priorities and provide a framework in which decisions are made. For example, "Knowledge and skills are the keys to success" or "give a man bread and feed him for a day, but teach him to farm and feed him for life". These example values may set the priorities of self sufficiency over shelter.
• Strategy: Strategy, narrowly defined, means "the art of the general." A combination of the ends (goals) for which the firm is striving and the means (policies) by which it is seeking to get there. A strategy is sometimes called a roadmap which is the path chosen to plow towards the end vision. The most important part of implementing the strategy is ensuring the company is going in the right direction which is towards the end vision.

Organizations sometimes summarize goals and objectives into a mission statement and/or a vision statement. Others begin with a vision and mission and use them to formulate goals and objectives.

Many people mistake the vision statement for the mission statement, and sometimes one is simply used as a longer term version of the other. However they are meant to be quite different, with the vision being a descriptive picture of a desired future state, and the mission being a statement of a business rationale, applicable now as well as in the future. The mission is therefore the means of successfully achieving the vision.

For an organisation's vision and mission to be effective, they must become assimilated into the organization's culture. They should also be assessed internally and externally. The internal assessment should focus on how members inside the organization interpret their mission statement. The external assessment — which includes all of the businesses stakeholders — is valuable since it offers a different perspective. These discrepancies between these two assessments can provide insight into their effectiveness.

(This article provided by: Wikipedia - The free encyclopedia)