OPINION: Rigorous Self-Examination Key to Writing Successful Strategic Plan.

Byline: Andrew Thomson

Feb. 6--Most managers look forward to preparing a strategic business plan as much as they did a school term paper -- pages of pain, with no relevance to the real world. Worse, you can't even crib it from some little-known journal.

Once written and graded by someone else -- in school it was a teacher, now it's a banker, or head office -- it just goes in a drawer or onto a shelf, and is not used again until the next time someone insists on a plan.

But the biggest benefits of writing a plan do not come from the plan itself but from the process of thinking strategically about your business.

The value comes from the process of evaluating how you plan to allocate scarce resources among competing needs to help accomplish your goals.

As discussed last week, the process should involve an assessment of strengths and weaknesses, known as "looking at your business from across the street". Visualise yourself as others see you and "think like a customer".

Strategic planning provides a focus and guideposts for decision-making. The idea is not to plan every ...