If you’re starting a new business or planning your business’s future, there are plenty of things you should take into account.

Strategic Planning For Dummies

covers everything you need to know to develop a plan for building and maintaining a competitive advantage — no matter what business you’re in.

Written by Erica Olsen, founder and President of a business development firm that helps entrepreneurial-minded businesses plan for a successful future, this handy guide covers all the basics, including:

• How a strategic plan is different than a business plan

• Establishing a step-based planning process

• Planning for and encouraging growth

• Taking a long-view of your organization

• Evaluating past performance

• Defining and refining your mission, values, and vision

• Sizing up your current situation

• Examining your industry landscape

• Setting your strategic priorities

• Planning for unknown contingencies

If you’re in business, you have to plan for everything — especially if you intend your business to grow. Whether you’re planning for a small business, large conglomerate, nonprofit, or even a government agency, this book has the planning specifics you need for your organization. Step-by-step, you’ll learn how to lay the foundations for a plan, understand how your plan will affect your business, form planning teams, discover what your strengths are, see where you are, and, finally, plan where you’re going. And there’s much more:

• Learn to analyze business trends that will determine your business’s future

• Set measurable, realistic goals that you can plan for and achieve

• Make strategic planning a habitual part of the organization

• Prioritize multiple strategies that you can implement simultaneously

• Set a defining vision for the organization that guides all your planning and strategy

This friendly, simple guide puts the power of strategic planning in the palm of your hand. For small businesses that can’t afford to hire strategic planning consultants, it’s even more imperative. Careful, constant planning is the only way to handle an uncertain business future. With this book, you’ll have all the step-by-step guidance you need to ensure you’re ready for anything that comes.

Amazon.com® Reader Reviews (Ranked by Helpfulness)

Average Amazon.com® Rating:  Based on 11 Ratings

Hmmm...a very suspicious Nevada Connection - 2007-02-16
Reviewer Rating:
I am interested in learning the nuts and bolts of strategic planning to better apply my company's strategy management software for our customers. This book appears to have received 8 glowing reviews. Funny thing, though: those reviewers who state their location are from Reno NV or other NV locations. The others do not give their location. Looking at the author's profile, she is located in Reno NV. Is that a coincidence or are these "seeded" reviews meant to pump up the book? To be fair, I have not read the book, nor will I give it a bad rating for having clearly suspicious reviews. If I buy it and like it, I will adjust my rating accordingly.

Smart and actionable - 2006-12-08
Reviewer Rating:
I like practical, actionable advice and this book delivers. You could use it to quickly develop a plan (it gives you shortcuts) or you can use the tools and business examples to go deep into your internal and external analyses. Even though I have done strategic planning before, this book covered several new topics that I will refer to and use as I update our plans. Every time I need a quick refresher, I'll be able to reach for my book and find it. It even helps you with the planning process, like how to hold a strategic planning retreat. No excuses!

Useful But..... - 2009-09-26
Reviewer Rating:
This book is like all to many non-fiction informative books.

It's way too long way to drawn out and that's not to say that there is no useful information because there is plenty. But it becomes a practice of self-discipline to push on and wade through all of the fluff and repetition to get to anything useful.

It's not very well written. I'd estimate that at least 40% of the book consists of lists. And 30% of the items on the list overlap/repeat other items on some other list.

To be fair there is a lot of useful information but you have to do your best and hang in there.

Good stuff. All of it. - 2009-07-28
Reviewer Rating:
"Strategic Planning" is a bit of a limited name in my opinion. I'd have called it "Business School in a Book" or maybe, "All the Things You Probably didn't Think About when your Last Business Failed." That's pretty much how I feel as I read it. As I reflect on past mistakes with this as a lens, things seem so much clearer. Providing a birds eye view of the overall business process and all its relevant areas of concern, this already worn book will be sitting on my desk for a long time.

Get it, Read It, Read it again in a few months - 2006-12-16
Reviewer Rating:
This is one of those book that you need to re-read every year or two. The lack of strategic planning is what really kills companies.

For instance: anyone could have seen for the past twenty years or so that the price of oil was going to go up dramatically. The American automobile companies, instead of working on fuel efficiency worked to convince people to buy big SUVs and pickup trucks, upon which they make more money. So gasoline goes to $3 a gallon, and the American companies lose more market share to the foreign manufactures. Thousands of automobile workers are laid off, and the Big 3 just may not survive.

Some of the points brought out in the book make such perfect sense - 'Increase Your Prices.' I work with a local civic chorus. They were charging $3 to attend a performance. I raised the price to $5, lots of doom forecasting. Just as many people came. I raised the price to $10 and spent a couple of hundred on posters put up around town. More people came than when the prices were $3.

Get the book. It's simple and fast to read. If you get only one good idea out of it you're way over the few bucks it cost and the few hours it took to read. In a few months, read it again. You'll get at least one more good idea.

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