Strategic Initiative

Strategic Planning Initiative

Planning for growth is based on today’s actions. That is true in life as well as in business. In life, one generally goes with the flow, unless there is a strong drive to succeed. However, in business there are systems to use that help to achieve and plan for growth, allowing a business to see today’s snapshot or where it currently is; see the future, or where they want to be; and determine the game plan using the information available to them to get them where the business wants to go; or See, Plan, Write, an alternative Strategic Plan used by many businesses to achieve their goals.

Strategic Planning Initiative: Starbucks

There are many ways to go about planning for the future; however, it is well received to use a 3 step approach. The introduction addresses this three step process. What is the situation? What is the target? What is the end result?

In everything there is good and bad, or good and not so good. In business it is the same. Last week Team B spoke to Financial Planning. This week we speak to Strategic planning and the differences thereof, simply stated, Financial Planning: How much comes in, how much goes out and how much is left over and what to do with the leftovers. Strategic Planning: How to do what the business wants to achieve, with the funding it has. Including the potential to be able to find resources or where to get more, should the need arise. At any given time a business should have as much liquidity as possible while still retaining their ability to profit from their investments.

There is good and bad debt. In the documentation presented in last week’s discussion, it

was suggested that if a company has a debt ratio less than .05, its debts are financed through equity, while if the debt ratio is more than .05, its assets are financed through debt. With just his statement alone, one can see that Starbucks for the fiscal year 2008, had been determined that it held its assets through debt....