The topic of choosing the right consultant for strategic planning is not simple, there are many people who run businesses, whether they are owners or directors, who face this challenge - who to include in such an important matter and be confident with that choice throughout the entire process?
Here are the most common reasons why it is difficult for us as business owners or directors to choose a person who will look at our business shoulder to shoulder with us from many angles, give different perspectives on something that is completely clear to us and encourage us to think completely outside of what is logical and usual for us, and all this with the goal of jointly creating a direction and what are alternative turns on that direction:
- Unclear expectations from the strategic planning process itself and questions to which we may not have answers at the start - what does that process mean, how is it done, which methodology is best for us and what are the desired outcomes?
*This is especially often if you are establishing the strategic planning process for the first time
- Difficulty finding a consultant who is open-minded enough to understand the specifics of my industry and at the same time encourage me to think outside the box
*This is especially common if the strategic planning process is understood with the idea of "We know it all, we just need a little help putting our thoughts and numbers together."
Strategic planning is not a question of whether you know your business well, because you will always know more about your business than most.
It is a matter of the consultant who guides you through the process having the breadth and depth of a view of business in general, serious experience, the skill to guide you to put your knowledge into the power of your future and the courage to tell you that you should think differently because sometimes the knowledge you have today it's not usable for the future, it's just a painful fact that's hard to accept
- A large number of consultants who present themselves as experts in this field
*This is a common phenomenon that should be avoided - strategic planning should be entrusted to someone whom you have carefully researched because this process is of vital importance for the success of your organization - invest the time to ask carefully who you are entrusting and whether it is a consultant who is experienced had the creation and implementation of different strategies, met with different industries, knows novel methodologies, and the most important question is whether that consultant experienced in his practice that some of the strategies he created worked and some did not, because if the consultant had all the strategies successful, something is not very logical
in the expertise and personality of the person poverenje u stručnost i ličnost osobe who guides us through this important process is crucial for the selection of a strategic planning consultant.
Yes, it is not at all easy to find such a person, but it is worth the effort!
