Every business situation is unique, so a “canned” approach rarely works. Our four-step process guides our engagements. Since we recognize that every organization’s issues are different, we adjust and customize our approach for every client.

For some, our typical process meets the need effectively with only a few minor adjustments. However, in cases where our client is entering a new market against an existing competitor or experiencing another company entering their market, a basic war game exercise is often a more effective approach. War game sessions engage the client team in a process that helps them better anticipate what the competitor may do and leading to the development of more effective plans. War gaming is particularly popular in the pharmaceutical industry.

We often facilitate strategic planning discussions with extended client-management teams as a way to involve the organization more fully in the process, assure that we make use of critical in-house knowledge and generate fuller buy-in for the resulting plan. Unlike many facilitators, we believe that bringing data and analysis to these sessions is critical. It is not enough to simply gather the team for a discussion and hope all possible factors are considered. We’ve mastered the balance between being a neutral guide and making sure that the process has a good outcome.

We always collaborate closely with CEOs and their leadership team so that they understand how we arrived at our recommendations and so the plans we develop are not only innovative, but also pragmatic. A plan that does not get implemented is not a good plan, no matter how elegant the analysis behind it.

I had the opportunity to develop these video “mini-lectures” on the importance of a business plan and related topics for a web business called BusinessTown. BusinessTown is a site developed by an entrepreneur named Bob Adams with the vision to “deliver world-class advice, inspiration and motivation in a way that makes it fun and easy to start and run a small business.”

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