Independent of size of the firm, business planning is a crucial exercise to define an end goal, proactively take corrective actions, energize the employee base and maintain the health/growth of a firm. It's akin to setting course for a ship about to set sail, whilst making sure the captain and crew are all working in unison. 

One of my primary task, in my current role, is to drive the Business planning cycle i.e set course for the captain and crew. For those not familiar with business planning, it's to:

  1. Understand the current state of affairs and identify some key assumptions about the business mix, over a pre-defined time horizon (typically: 3 or 5 years)
  2. Forecast sales, margins and costs
  3. Identify dependencies that are tied to opportunities
  4. Articulate few actions should be taken to mitigate the risks (or dependencies) 
  5. Pressure test across different business units, to ensure alignment.

The challenge is that I have to lead this exercises across 5 business units, each with its own flavor of business mix, and then ensure alignment across sales and global teams. This brings in a lot personality types, opinions and therefore emotions into the picture (watch out, there might be mutiny a foot). To address these dynamics, there are 3 themes (or best practices) that I believe are critical to the success of a business planning cycle:

  1. Active Listening - Listen to understand vs to respond (More here).

  2. Outcome driven Collaboration - Avoid actions that create zero value.
  3. Trust - This is the corner stone of success.

The key thing to remember - You're driving for the success of a firm/organization, not an individual, so nothing is personal.

Overall, if done, well executed business planning can lead to sustained competitive advantage and therefore pivotal to business' success! 

Otherwise, it's a like ship, headed by a captain with no map or sense of destination and a crew that lacks motivation to succeed.