The planning process on most grazing properties is usually informal, but creating a plan that can be shared increases the chances of business success. Successful businesses navigate through their challenges because they plan for success. Both intuition and logic play important roles within the strategic planning processes — the key is knowing where to apply each to create an effective way forward.
Effective planning delivers the following benefits:
- Clarity in the future direction of the business: Planning ensures all business stakeholders are on board and are committed to the goals and objectives.
- Concentrates effort and investment on the important things: The importance of something is determined by its value and impact on those within the business and the business itself. It is important to focus on the high-value, high-impact objectives.
- Saves wasted effort and investment on the distractions: Distractions are a cost to the business and only a disciplined approach to identifying them will prevent this waste.
- Greater job satisfaction: Planning outlines clear progress towards business goals and objectives and increase confidence in the team to adjust to new challenges.
- Manage risks: Planning helps to identify actions that can be implemented to manage and reduce the impact of risks in a business.
- Opportunity assessment: An efficient opportunity assessment will save time and money. Prompt decision making and risk assessment enables a business to capitalise on opportunities.