Most organizations, whether small businesses, start ups, or government have challenges aligning their vision with the work that they do day to day. If these organizations focused their energy on a few specific areas they would move forward faster and with more impact. The benefit of having a clear strategy communicated throughout the organization will pay dividends in increased productivity and decreased waste. For help with identifying your organization's strategic priorities visit www.smestrategy.net

1. Strategic Planning For
Startups
How to do more with less

2. What are you trying to do?
To gain customers, to grow revenues, to either exit by
acquisition or continue growth trajectory.

3. What’s next?
Planning can help with the daily tasks to get you where
you want to go.

4. Today’s objectives
• Providing advice in establishing long-term goals
• Defining vision, mission and values of
organization
• Providing input on the critical strategic issues and
the proposed strategic direction
• Engaging in what will be accomplished, not how
to achieve the results

5. What are your biggest
challenges working with
your team?

6. An Exercise

7. What game is your team
playing?

8. Who am I
Principal consultant at SME
Strategy
We work with the
management teams of
SME’s to assess and
improve their strategies.
I like soccer, scotch, and
puns.
Connect with me:
@anthonyctaylor

9. Objectives for today
Best practices in:
• How to best establish/determine long term goals
• Defining vision, mission and values.
• Proving input on key issues relating to strategic
direction
• Focusing on objectives and not tactics.

10. When does the planning process
begin?
During team meetings?
During an strategy sessions?
At Start up?

11. Who decides the direction?

12. (Some of the)
Things you need to worry about
• Burn Rate
• Product market fit
• Customer Acquisition
• Hiring Talent
• Customer retention
• Attracting investment
• Office space/managing growth
• Pitching, marketing and sales
• Improving your product
• Culture
• IP/Legal
• Investor relations

13. What are the most important
things you should be doing?

15. Why do strategic planning?
• To better allocate resources
• To focus on specific initiatives
• To create better focus in your organization
• To create better alignment within your
organization
• To change the direction of your organization
• To deal with competitors
• To merge companies together

16. Building towards the
strategic plan

17. How did we get to where
we are now?

18. How did we get here
• Results from the last plan.
• What worked?
• What didn’t?
• How did we do over all?

19. What’s going on in the
world around us?
And what does it mean to our business?

20. Inputs
PESTLE
• POLITICAL,
• ECONOMICAL,
• SOCIETAL,
• TECHNOLOGICAL,
• LEGAL,
• ENVIRONMENTAL

21. External forces

22. What’s the state of the
company?

23. Inputs
o SWOT
• STRENGTHS, WEAKNESSES,OPPORTUNITIES,
THREATS
o Ie: Funding environment, competition, etc.
• Stakeholder and management team inputs.

24. My questions
• What do we do well?
• Where can we improve?
• What changes would we like to see?

25. What is (your) business?
• Core Competencies
• What are you good
at?
• ______________
• ______________
• ______________
• ______________
#IMMCYC
Anthony C Taylor- SME Strategy
25

26. What is (your) business?
• Core Competencies
• What are you good
at?
• _______________
• _______________
• _______________
• _______________
• Competitive advantage
• What are you better at
compared to everyone
else?
• __________________
• __________________
• __________________
• __________________
#IMMCYC
Anthony C Taylor- SME Strategy
26

27. Competitive advantages cont’
Will this:
• Increase revs/decrease costs?
• Are there any unusual skills that are needed to
execute this strategy?
• Will it take competitors significant time to
imitate?
• What’s the advantage potential?
#IMMCYCAnthony C Taylor- SME Strategy 27

28. Competitive advantage cont’
• VIRO
• Valuable
• Imitable
• Rare
• Organization- Is the
firm organized to
implement the
strategy.
• Valuable strategies are
table stakes (ante)
• Valuable and hard to
imitate will be short
term advantage
• Valuable, rare and
hard to imitate will
result in long term
advantage.
#IMMCYC
Anthony C Taylor- SME Strategy
28

29. The strategic planning
process
How do we get there?

30. Vision
Mission
Objectives/Goals
Strategies
Tactics

31. Vision
Where do we want to be at some point in the future?

32. Vision
• Where are we going?
• Why should we go there?
• What is winning?

33. If success was a place, how
would we know if we got
there?

34. Creating a vivid vision
And getting agreement on it.

36. Vision
• Get your team to describe their vision of the
organization as clearly and vividly as possible.
• What do operations look like?
• What do staff look like?
• What do clients look like?
• How else does your organization look different?
• Like a blueprint for a house, you build the design.

37. Mission
How are we going to get there?
What do we do?
Who do we do it for?

38. Mission
• How do you accomplish your vision?
• What is your purpose?
• Who is your core customer?
• What do you do for them?
• What differentiates your value from your
competition?

39. Do you understand your
customers?
• What are the
Alternatives for
your customer?
• Cost
• Time
• Work for the buyer
• Warranty
• Risk
• Eg:
• What is your
customers’ thought
process in regards to
your product?
• How do they buy it?
• When do they buy it?
• How do they find out
about it?
#IMMCYC
Anthony C Taylor- SME Strategy
39

40. What is the most important
factor to a companies
success?
According to successful tech entrepreneurs and VC’s?

41. Values

42. Values
• What is in the DNA of your organization?
• What do you value?
• What are the cultures and norms or your
organization?

43. Organizational values |
Guiding principles.
• Values and behaviors are: “The way we do things
around here.”
• What negative behaviors might be addressed
with a statement of values?
• To what degree do the stated values differ from
actual behavior?

44. Vision
Mission
Objectives/Goals
Strategies
Tactics

45. Goals and objectives

46. Goals and objectives
• Goals are generic themes that support the
accomplishing the mission
• Objectives are specific and measurable that
contribute to moving the needle on the goals.
o Eg: Moving from X to Y by Date.
• Strategies and tactics are done at the
implementation level to accomplish the objective.

47. Strategic intent
• Headlines or themes for how you will execute
your strategy.
• Broadly specific areas of focus.
• Makes it easy to communicate, and focuses
action.
o “Think of new years resolutions”

48. MISSION
VISION
What is going to move the
needle on the vision?
SPECIFIC OBJECTIVES AND INITIATIVES
GOAL 1 GOAL 2 GOAL 3
Your organization’s vision:
Our purpose….

49. What is going to move your
organization closer to your
vision?

50. Setting goals
3-5 year goals
1 year goals
Quarterly goals

52. Cascading goals
• Creating different goals for:
• The organization
• The business Unit
• The individual

53. Top 5 and top 1 of 5
• What are your top 5 priorities for the Quarter?
• Of those top 5 priorities, which is the top priority?
• Make significant progress on a few initiatives vs.
incremental progress on many initiatives.

54. KPI’s
• How do you measure success?
• What key ratios exist in your business?
• What is the most important ratio/measure in your
business?

55. Focusing on objectives and not
tactics.

56. Other parts of the planning
process

57. Success drivers

59. Big Picture vs. Practical
application

60. Constraints
• Time
• Budgets
• Human Resources
• Technology
• Other Constraints?

61. People
• Who are the key people in the organization that
are responsible for functional areas?
• Where are the gaps as far as key functions?
• Are there people responsible for more than one
area?
• Help them do more by focusing on fewer areas

62. Communicating the plan
• How are you going to share this strategic plan
with your organization?
• Keep in mind that different people absorb
information in different ways:
o Words
o Audio
o Pictures

63. Potential Risks
What is going to try and get in our way?
How to stop it?
What needs to be addressed?

64. Risks
• What uncertainty exists in our organization?
• What are the impacts of that uncertainty (risk)
• What is the likelihood of that happening?
• What can we do to mitigate that risk?

65. RisksRiskLikelihood
Risk Impact
Low Moderate High
LowModerateHigh

66. Cash flow planning

67. Cash flow planning

68. Communication and
Alignment

70. Functional Management

71. It’s all about alignment.

72. When the rubber hits the
road
You need to align and execute

73. Happy Planning!
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1-855-895-5446