Your Business Plan Should Be a Strategic Spring Board, Not a Dynamic Anchor

Today's real estate industry is awash in new strategies. Franchises, brokerages, Multiple Listing Services and professional associations are all using "strategic" as their new magic word. Some of these strategies represent bold and innovative steps into a new and exciting future. Others, unfortunately, are just updates and recasts of what their sponsoring organization has always done in the past.

Fortunately, more and more of these organizations are opting to seek outside expertise with their strategic plan document. The key differentiating factor here is the difference between acquiring assistance (an amateur commodity) and acquiring expertise, the commodity that is really needed. Not so fortunately, many brokerage executives are electing to align their future potentials with individuals who have little or no experience with the concepts of strategy or are already aligned with a larger philosophical entity (e.g. a franchise) to which them have already pledged their allegiance.

Many of these plan documents suffer from substance abuse. This is what occurs when the individual selected by the organization or company to facilitate their planning experience (rather than process) casually asks everyone in the organization what they think should happen, then gathers the leaders and executives together for a more intimate view, then moves the organizational pieces forward in incremental steps so that, when executed, the organization will look exactly like it has always looked, just a year or two older. In other words, Substance Abuse in planning is what happens when the plan document reflects where the company or organization has been rather than where it wants to go. Substance Abuse is what happens when a strategic plan becomes a task list rather than an expression of strategic intent.

But interestingly enough, as great a hardship as identifying an appropriate planning professional, creating an effective planning process and giving birth to an innovative business plan has become the ultimate challenge in accomplishing a successful implementation process.