... and what is your level of understanding of the key performance factors?

 Developing the focus for your organization and then using that focus to achieve key goals with  all your people and processes is never easy but it is essential for success. Often this work is ignored, the need rationalized away or large planning exercise  satisfies the need and then little attention is given to implementation.   An effective focus  involves  is the result of an accurate assessment of the situation.  This means having an effective assessment process that results in an accurate understanding of the following:

• Your own values, resources, competencies and weaknesses (an area not as easy as it sounds)
• Your customers and prospective customer's needs, behaviors segments..
• Your potential issues and influences arising from external environments including the economy, politics, legal influences, regulations, competition, technology,  demographics, culture, psychographics, geography etc…

With this understanding, engaging as a leader with both employees and other stakeholders or outside advisor to turn these assessments into understanding is key.  And once understanding is achieved, then a successful action plan can be developed.   Implementing an action plan based on this is a bit more complex because it is often changing and sometimes quite rapidly.   This is often why it requires a process  to periodically inter-relate (discuss) the different facets of this understanding to create ideas, insights and new prospective strategies.   As part of this, you should create a listing of your internal strengths and weaknesses as well as a summary of your threats, opportunities and potentially trends.  This so-called SWOTT, however, is perhaps, the most mis-used concept in business planning. Without the right assessment (research), it is most commonly a list of dated and unchallenged assumptions that when used to develop ideas and strategies results in the wrong strategy and disastrous consequences.