Business Planning Over Twenty Years

Strategic Goals The author of this report has been charged with offering some strategies that would be used to "define, prioritize and meet short-term goals." Short-term goals would be those that have an impact over the next one to four years, mostly.

It will also be included how those goals would support flexibility over that same time period in an "ever-evolving world." Further, there will be an assessment of a "futurist context." Specifically, this would meant that strategies that would be used for long-term goals, meaning over the next fifteen to twenty years.

While looking five, fifteen or twenty years down the road may seem like a stretch to many, it is important to plan things out in advance as much as is reasonably possible based on what is currently desired for the company and what is known about the proverbial playing field.

Analysis In terms of strategies and how they would be formulated, one major thing that has to be taken seriously when it comes to all objectives is what is core to the business and what the overall strategic direction should be. For example, if a business is breaking even but just barely, the foci would need to be based on what can be done to get more of a cushion between cost of goods sold and overall revenue.

If the business is profitable but there is the desire for expansion, then the strategy of the business would focus on how to invest in growth and where the funds for that growth would come from, whether that be cash on hand and/or loans or credit lines. The point is that there has to be an assessment of where the business currently is, where the people involved wants the business to be and how to get there.

How one prioritizes the action items would really center on what is part of the critical path and what is more ancillary. For example, if expansion plans include adding more computers and network capability, it would have to be figured out how to pay for it (probably the most important thing), who will be configuring and setting it up and what that setup will look like, overall (Vanden Bos, 2015). As for more long-term goals, one can be a little more lofty and aggressive. However, one also has to be realistic.

First, there would obviously have to be an alignment between the short-term and long-term goals. This does not mean that they will not be different at all but they do have to make sense when compared to each other. For example, if the current action item is to get a healthy profit margin and then there will be expansion, it would make sense if the short-term goals focus on the former and the long-term goals focus on the latter.

Another example would be that short-term goals focus on expanding within the surrounding geographical area and long-term goals being going beyond that to another part of the state or country. Just as with the short-term goals, there needs to be a definition of where the funds will come from, what precisely will be done and who will be doing it. Prioritization will have to be based on getting those puzzle pieces into place in the proper fashion and in the right order (Stanleigh, 2015).

Conclusion Goals are a pivotal and otherwise important part of helping a business or organization grow and prosper. There has to be a focus on what makes the business or organization sustainable because there will be bad events if focus on that.