A better approach to strategic planning
Blue Sky Partners’ Snapshots workshop offers a new model to help you connect your company’s big goals with the steps you need to take to achieve them.
The average strategic planning process can cost up to $60,000.
And what do you get for that investment? A well-thought out, expensive pile of documents… that just sit there.
Sure, you may refer back to it a couple of times in the months that follow, but you’ll most likely not do it often enough to make it worth the cash investment. And then think about the psychological toll of knowing that a $60,000 document is sitting in your desk drawer, probably judging you for your lack of initiative or something.
Our founding team knows this feeling well, because we’ve all been through it ourselves. So, over the last year, BSP decided to put together a simplified tool to address this; we spent time with hundreds of entrepreneurs trying to figure out the simplest, most cost-effective way to help teams of all sizes visualize the future of their startup, small business, or corporate department.
And what we came up with is a process called Snapshots.
Snapshots are a simplified strategic planning tool, focused on helping you connect your biggest goals to the actions you need to take to achieve them and the team and other resources you have at your fingertips to make it happen.
The Snapshots process is intentionally very simple, focused on key metrics and areas of your business.
- Timeframe: What timeframe are you filling this out for? We recommend starting by creating a Snapshots for where your business is at currently, then producing one that’s one to two years in the future and working backwards from there so you eventually have current, three months, six months, one year, two years.
- Revenue Goal: How much money do you want to be making overall?
- Profit margin: How much of that money do you want to have left over after you’ve covered all your expenses?
- Services or Products: Which products or services are you offering customers to make that money?
- Big goals + Measurables + Obstacles: What goals do you have at this point in time, and how are you going to measure progress? What might get in your way?
- Org chart: Who are you going to lean on to get this work done? We recommend including employees, partners, vendors, and contractors in this org chart.
Snapshots are designed to provide a visual for your organization’s future to ensure that next time an investor, prospective client or employee asks you, “what will your company look like in two years?” you have a solid, thoughtful answer. Much like our best laid plans, your Snapshots will likely change and iterate based on reality, but as we’ve used them, we’ve found them to be a strategic resource that actually gets used, referred back to and iterated on often to ensure that our predictions match what’s happening in the real world.
We think they’ll be useful for you and your team too.
To download Snapshots, click here.
If you’re an early-stage startup or a non-profit, and want different metrics as part of your worksheets, or you just have questions, please email us at hello@blueskypartners.co.
Happy planning!
