While many business people understand the importance of setting formal direction for a business by preparing a Strategic Plan,  it seems that few people know that the starting point to prepare such a plan is actually the performance of a Gap Analysis.

A Gap Analysis – if done comprehensively, with the right questions being asked of a business owner (and with honest answers being given by the business owners in return) – will uncover (most importantly) the current shortcomings/ weaknesses in the given business. By bringing these shortcomings/ weaknesses to the fore it only then becomes possible to translate these deficits into “opportunities for improvement development” – articulated as such in the form of objectives in the Strategic Plan.

So in short, a Gap Analysis is performed to uncover potential areas of improvement for a business to focus on, which are then articulated as objectives in the resulting Strategic Plan. 

A Gap Analysis should include questions such as these…

Operating Structure –

  • Broadly, how do you describe how the business operates ?
  • What systemization is in place – and are there opportunities to introduce greater systemization ? Where and how ?
  • How do internal stakeholders know what to do ? What guides their day-to-day activity ?
  • What written Operating Procedures are in place ? How easy are these for the employees in the various roles to interpret and act upon ?
  • How do you monitor the performance of the business ? What benchmarking/ KPI reporting do you perform ?
  • Do you have sufficient HR capacity, capability and competency to enable you to achieve your strategic objectives ?
  • etc

 

 Communications –

  • What communication methods and channels do you use ?
  • How would you describe the flow of communication within your business ?
  • When decisions are made at a senior management/ governance level, are such decisions communicated clearly and on a timely basis to relevant subordinates ?
  • etc

 

 Workplace Culture –

  • What key words would you use to describe the current culture of your business ?
  • What key words would you use to describe the kind of culture that you aspire to have in your business ?
  • What factors do you think are standing in your way of you achieving the kind of culture that you desire ?
  • etc

 

…and so on.

So if you want to construct a Strategic Plan that is all-encompassing, start by performing a Gap Analysis to uncover the “good and the bad”, and then translate the “bad” into improvement objectives in your Strategic Plan. And better still, have such an analysis performed by someone who has no vested interest in your business – that’s when the opportunity for the absolute truth to come out is best created. When the truth of the matter is out on the table, a business is then given the greatest opportunity to improve (sometimes this means “survive”).

Go well.