Strategic Planning For Dummies®

Chapter 7. Assessing Your Business and Its Capabilities

In This Chapter

• Summarizing your strengths and weaknesses

• Evaluating how to hire, develop, and retain your best and brightest employees

• Checking out your capabilities and resources and linking them together

• Assessing your profit margins

Imagine you're setting out on a road trip. You hop on MapQuest or open up the AAA roadmap to select the quickest route from your home to your destination. With your trip plan in mind, you consult your friend because he traveled that road before. After you're feeling good about your route, you check your resources against your trip plan to make sure that you have enough time and gas to get there. Then, you assess your VW bus to ensure that it's in working condition and that your CD carrier (or iPod) is full of great music. You pack your bags and invite two friends because they're fun to have around.

Sound familiar? This situation may sound too methodical, but more than likely, you went through all those steps before you headed out on the road (even if you were driving a beater bus!). Mapping a strategic plan is just the same: Your company needs a roadmap or plan to make the strategic plan work. This chapter focuses on your bus. More specifically, this chapter takes a look at the following points:

• How does being on your bus feel? How it feels on the “bus” is your company culture — teamwork, leadership, climate for action.

• Are the right people on your bus and in the right seats? Are you keeping them there? ...