Balancing Life With A Strategic Plan

While spending time with a business owner, we got into a discussion about strategic planning.

He was quite convinced tht it was unnecessary to have a strategic plan due to his success that he already had accomplished. Of course, that is not totally true, due to the changing environment and the dynamic world of global business. Every business needs a adaptable and  flexible strategic plan that can guide the organisation or company into the future while anticipating the strengths and weaknesses and opportunities and threats it will deal with on the way.

But the conversation took an interesting twist, because as I then questioned him further, the personal need for  a personal leadership strategic plan was highlighted.

Do you have a persona strategic plan for your life? No was his asnswer?

Often times that is the case with business leaders,they do well, extremely well with their careers but when it comes to elements of their personal lives outside of their careers they are struggling to keep their head above water. 

How about you?

The worst is that although this maybe the case they often either ignore the fact because they haven’t got time for the problems outside of their career, or they are not aware of the problems because they are too busy building a success for themselves, or they try and compartmentalise their lives and hope to get to the personal areas sometime when they give it the priority it needs.

Maybe, just maybe that there is no one to talk to who will not prejudge, use it as a weapon, misunderstand or tell everyone on the board about what you are dealing with.

The fact is a personal leadership strategic plan will assist you to unveil the issues that need dealing with and keep them in perspective, while keeping a focus on what motivates you and keeps you on the pathway to your full potential, personally and professionally.  

Continuous Improvement For Strategic Living

Nobody should be content to stay where they are, no matter how successful you may seem to be.

Organisations and businesses should be in a constant state of continuous improvement to meet the need of total quality and that involves strategic thinking and planning so they capitalise on their assets and resources.

Basically, every organisation that wants to be competitive in this economic environment will focus on their total quality. Total quality as we know equals continuous improvement, of strategy planning, structures and systems.

But regardless of how superb and fine tuned any of these elements are they involve people. People are the hands and brains of every strategic plan, structure and system. The output and facilitation is only as good as those that see to its application. The output of total quality in any organisation depends on the quality of the people that are found in its various components,.

For an organisation to experience continuous improvement, the individuals involved need to experience continuous improvement. And just as any organisation that wants and needs continuous improvement has to develop and maintain a strategic plan, the leadership has to develop and maintain a strategic personal plan that is inspiring them to a personal environment of continuous change and improvement.

Every organisation and business can only experience the quality that its people carry within it. Personal leadership strategic planning is vital to master your own development and continuous improvement. A personal strategic plan will reduce the personal elements that cause stress and that affect productivity and personal total quality.

Whether it is your personal or professional relationships; your own personal goals and objectives being fulfilled, your recognition, your skill set, your financial mastery, or your own self awareness and objectivity and ability to self-motivate, only with a personal strategy plan by which you discover, and evaluate the various elements can you personally keep on track to accomplish personal continuous improvement.

Strategic Relationships

As I sat with a couple they confided “How could this have happened to us?”

“We don’t know what happened but we don’t love each other anymore and we don’t get along.”

It was a story I had heard many times before. Now the marriage relationship was left to crisis management to try and restore what was ‘missing’ or to play 'catch up' with what was needed in a whole marriage relationship.

Without a focused deposit of the necessary ingredients to keep a relationship at its best, the neglect will result in a relationship starved of growth and vitality. Every relationship including marriage requires daily and regular deposits of communication, companionship, and consideration. Without these basics your relationship will end up shipwrecked. But the investments we need to make are easily overlooked and without us knowing it, the relationship slowly but surely, through neglect, begins to die.

To revive a neglected and starved relationship takes huge amounts of investment of communication, companionship and consideration that at times requires more emotional energy than you can muster at the time.

Proactive leaders do not wait for the crisis; they build into their personal development a strategic plan that incorporates a what and a how for their relationships. Your strategic plan will give you the wise balance of personal resources that will need to be daily invested into your interpersonal relationships.