Starting the year right

One of the best ways to assure your company has a good year is to have a concrete, documented strategic planning process.  Ideally, your strategic planning should occur during a time when it will have less impact on your routine operations, but the key point is that you actually schedule and hold strategic planning meetings.  To minimize conflict and schedule issues, it's also a good idea to plan your meetings one or two months in advance, and possible even longer if your team has difficult travel schedules.  I've found that you will get a lot more out of your team if you hold your planning meeting off-site and work with a professional strategic planner who is not going to try to use the process to sell you other consulting.  If you can afford to get your team out of town to a nice destination, it is definitely worth the effort, as your team will look forward to the process and view strategic planning as something to look forward to.  Start your year off well by scheduling your strategic planning this week!