Three reasons why a long-term strategy is vital for business success

postit-strategy long-term strategy

When crises occur, a long-term horizon very quickly contracts to dealing with immediate problems and avoiding catastrophe. For many organisations, the COVID-19 pandemic produced a never-ending stream of challenges that have impacted long-term strategy.

It’s been about survival mode and worry about the future later. But the longer we focus only on managing in the moment, the greater the risk of losing in the long term. There are three reasons why a long-term term strategy is vital for sustainable business success:

1. Looking further ahead enables us to set higher ambitions.

The traditional definition of strategy is simple — it’s a plan to achieve long-term competitive advantage. In other words, how we can do better than our competitors, or any potential substitutes, with what we offer? And not just right now, but over time? One of the simplest ways to raise our ambition is to extend our horizon. Ask me if I could run a marathon next week, and the immediate answer is no. I’m not fit enough, I haven’t done the training and I don’t have the gear. Extend the time horizon two years into the future however, and possibilities increase — if I choose to implement the right training program, that ambition can be brought to life.  Similarly, when planning for your business, looking further ahead enables you to raise your ambition.

2. We can’t make strategic decisions without a long-term view

When our gaze is limited to what’s right in front of us, we stop being strategic — we have lost sight of our long game. Every time you take an action that has any potential future impact, you’re making a strategic choice. If you’re not committed to a long-term ambition, then your perspective is too narrow and you’re likely to be making choices based only on what is right in front of you. The supply contract that offers only short-term discounts, rather than long term security of supply and sustainable resourcing. Or the staff reductions to cover an immediate lull, but which will result in skills shortages once recovery gains momentum.

3. Shared long-term ambition generates momentum

Organisations with a shared long-term ambition are clear about what matters most. Strategic choices, their risks and benefits, can be viewed from this wider context. This perspective enables more confident, faster decision-making because the end goal is clear. When Australia’s international borders were shut in 2020, Tourism Australia was one of many organisations required to adapt abruptly. Its mandate is to attract international visitors to Australia, but with international travel on hold the organisation pivoted within weeks to roll out their first domestic campaign — “Holiday here this year” — to support local tourism, until this too was interrupted by domestic border closures.

In the two years prior to the reopening of international borders in March, Tourism Australia continued to focus on the building blocks needed for longer-term resilience and recovery. Building international visitation is a process that can take months, if not years, as potential visitors move through the stages of awareness, consideration and then booking.

As chief marketing officer Susan Coghill explained to me: “We understand that for us to succeed as a brand and as a destination, we always have to play the long game.”

Tourism Australia continued to prioritise creativity in campaign design and crisis management, together with consensus about their long-term purpose.

Strategy is never fixed, because the world we operate in is never static. Sometimes long-term planning gets parked while everyone focuses on an immediate crisis, but we can’t afford to stay fixed in the moment for ever. Our experiences during the pandemic have taught us that in times of uncertainty there is power in committing to your long game. Reaching consensus on a shared, long-term ambition and the strategic roadmap to achieve it helps organisations make the right choices and build the resilience to keep moving forward despite upheaval.

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How Relevant is Long-Range Strategic Planning?

Strategic planning concepts and the notion of long-range planning will continue to be integral parts of responsible management. But they may require a substantial rethinking if they are to remain relevant. For example, they will have to be applied more selectively, depending on such things as the industry, the nature of competition, and the speed with which a particular organization's environment is changing. And there is a question about whether a sufficient cadre of managers is being prepared to do this. These are conclusions resulting from a reading of responses to this month's column.

In defense of strategic planning, Greg Martin said, "Same story, different day: in times of change it is practically irresistible to not throw the baby out with the bathwater. While technology has and will continue to accelerate the pace of change…it can also be cleverly leveraged to facilitate an iterative, evergreen process of strategy formulation and implementation."

David Wittenberg added, "Strategic planning, especially long-term strategic planning, is no less necessary in a fast-changing world. Clayton Christensen reminded us that the root cause of every business disaster is mistakenly pursuing short-term goals ahead of long-term ones." Daniel T. C. Lee commented, "Traditional or not, strategic planning has never restricted new innovation…. The issue is the extent and depth of the analysis."

Several argued along with Munyaradzi Mushato, who said, ''the need for a sustainable strategy is actually higher in a volatile market space … why deliberately go out to plan to build a short-lived competitive strategy?" Paul Tiffany commented that the question we should be debating revolves around the tools that are most appropriate to the task today, such as David Teece's ''Dynamic Capabilities'' model.

Huw Morris was among those suggesting adaptation. He regards current strategic planning concepts as relevant, but warned that they need to be used to promote agility. For example, he said, ''by strategy task forces that 'hack' rather than as part of a long annual strategic planning process." Gary Johnson put it this way: "Competitive advantage and a business without strategy-one that is in constant reactiveness, seem to be an oxymoron; a 'living' strategic plan will always help a business be more competitive." Shadreck Saili said that while long-range strategic planning may still be relevant to some degree, ''the frequency of monitoring and evaluating of strategic plans becomes therefore a relevant factor to consider." Edward Hare suggested that, "What organizations need to do is break old habits of practicing planning as ceremonial processes that are conducted periodically. That'll probably happen … Those that don't just won't survive."

This led to the question of why managers have been reluctant to adopt new methods of planning. Janice Maffei framed the case by saying that "We need to influence leaders to envision longer term possibilities while creating short term experiments." Shann Turnbull warned this may not be easy, commenting: "The establishment of 'smaller, faster, more agile organizations' is inherently a governance problem…. The problem is that network governance is not taught in business schools or any other faculties." How can strategic planning be adapted to changing needs? What will it take? What do you think?

Original Article

From time to time thinking converges around a set of ideas. For us this month, the topic is strategy planning and organization. Conventional thinking and organization that has encouraged us to seek sustainable competitive advantage in the past is being questioned in today's business environment. Some are even suggesting that the mind set that has given us strategic planning concepts such as SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats) analysis, the "five forces," growth share matrices, five-year plans, and an emphasis on core competencies of the firm may lead to competitive disadvantage in a technology-transformed world in which markets, employee and customer mind sets, and innovations, evolve at a rapid rate.

The conversation was stimulated (can it be 16 years ago?) by Clayton Christensen's work leading to his book, The Innovator's Dilemma . In one sense, the book was mistitled. Some of its most salient material concerned issues confronting large corporations facing innovative upstarts with disruptive ventures, the non-innovator's dilemma. But it also dealt with the challenges of achieving innovation in a world of entrenched ideas about how products are developed and used. Implicitly, the book questioned traditional concepts of strategic planning in an environment populated by increasingly innovative and agile competitors.

Now comes a new book, The End of Competitive Advantage , by Rita Gunther McGrath. Hers is a frontal attack on accepted strategic planning methods designed, in her opinion, for another time. These are methods based on the presumption that competitive advantage is sustainable. It's a presumption that she claims "creates all the wrong reflexes" in a world in which the best one can hope for is "transient competitive advantage."

McGrath's prescription for achieving transient competitive advantage includes such things as smaller, faster, more agile organizations--and where management-by-consensus is a thing of the past. The emphasis is on marshalling rather than owning assets, including talent. In order to ensure the appropriate deployment of these assets from one opportunity to another, it will be necessary to recentralize control over the resource allocation process, moving it out of strategic business units (SBUs). It raises questions about the relevancy of SBUs as opposed to transient teams as a form of organization.

These organizations engage in "shape shifting" based on systematic innovation and the constant testing of assumptions, all required to maintain transient advantage. They are organizations designed to create and test options, practicing "continuous deployment," doing things "fast and roughly right" rather than relying on strategic planning as we have known it.

McGrath makes her points forcefully, but laments the slow rate at which these changes are being adopted in large organizations. If these ideas are so powerful, she asks, "why hasn't basic strategy practice changed?" Is her thinking on target but just a bit ahead of the curve? How relevant is long-range strategic planning and its assumptions of sustainable competitive advantage? What do you think?

To Read More:

Clayton M. Christensen, The Innovator's Dilemma (Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 1997)

Rita Gunther McGrath, The End of Competitive Advantage: How To Keep Your Strategy Moving As Fast As Your Business (Boston: Harvard Business Review Press, 2013)

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Why Is Strategic Planning Important?

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  • 06 Oct 2020

Do you know what your organization’s strategy is? How much time do you dedicate to developing that strategy each month?

If your answers are on the low side, you’re not alone. According to research from Bridges Business Consultancy , 48 percent of leaders spend less than one day per month discussing strategy.

It’s no wonder, then, that 48 percent of all organizations fail to meet at least half of their strategic targets. Before an organization can reap the rewards of its business strategy, planning must take place to ensure its strategy remains agile and executable .

Here’s a look at what strategic planning is and how it can benefit your organization.

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What Is Strategic Planning?

Strategic planning is the ongoing organizational process of using available knowledge to document a business's intended direction. This process is used to prioritize efforts, effectively allocate resources, align shareholders and employees on the organization’s goals, and ensure those goals are backed by data and sound reasoning.

It’s important to highlight that strategic planning is an ongoing process—not a one-time meeting. In the online course Disruptive Strategy , Harvard Business School Professor Clayton Christensen notes that in a study of HBS graduates who started businesses, 93 percent of those with successful strategies evolved and pivoted away from their original strategic plans.

“Most people think of strategy as an event, but that’s not the way the world works,” Christensen says. “When we run into unanticipated opportunities and threats, we have to respond. Sometimes we respond successfully; sometimes we don’t. But most strategies develop through this process. More often than not, the strategy that leads to success emerges through a process that’s at work 24/7 in almost every industry.”

Strategic planning requires time, effort, and continual reassessment. Given the proper attention, it can set your business on the right track. Here are three benefits of strategic planning.

Related: 4 Ways to Develop Your Strategic Thinking Skills

Benefits of Strategic Planning

1. create one, forward-focused vision.

Strategy touches every employee and serves as an actionable way to reach your company’s goals.

One significant benefit of strategic planning is that it creates a single, forward-focused vision that can align your company and its shareholders. By making everyone aware of your company’s goals, how and why those goals were chosen, and what they can do to help reach them, you can create an increased sense of responsibility throughout your organization.

This can also have trickle-down effects. For instance, if a manager isn’t clear on your organization’s strategy or the reasoning used to craft it, they could make decisions on a team level that counteract its efforts. With one vision to unite around, everyone at your organization can act with a broader strategy in mind.

2. Draw Attention to Biases and Flaws in Reasoning

The decisions you make come with inherent bias. Taking part in the strategic planning process forces you to examine and explain why you’re making each decision and back it up with data, projections, or case studies, thus combatting your cognitive biases.

A few examples of cognitive biases are:

  • The recency effect: The tendency to select the option presented most recently because it’s fresh in your mind
  • Occam’s razor bias: The tendency to assume the most obvious decision to be the best decision
  • Inertia bias: The tendency to select options that allow you to think, feel, and act in familiar ways

One cognitive bias that may be more difficult to catch in the act is confirmation bias . When seeking to validate a particular viewpoint, it's the tendency to only pay attention to information that supports that viewpoint.

If you’re crafting a strategic plan for your organization and know which strategy you prefer, enlist others with differing views and opinions to help look for information that either proves or disproves the idea.

Combating biases in strategic decision-making requires effort and dedication from your entire team, and it can make your organization’s strategy that much stronger.

Related: 3 Group Decision-Making Techniques for Success

3. Track Progress Based on Strategic Goals

Having a strategic plan in place can enable you to track progress toward goals. When each department and team understands your company’s larger strategy, their progress can directly impact its success, creating a top-down approach to tracking key performance indicators (KPIs) .

By planning your company’s strategy and defining its goals, KPIs can be determined at the organizational level. These goals can then be extended to business units, departments, teams, and individuals. This ensures that every level of your organization is aligned and can positively impact your business’s KPIs and performance.

It’s important to remember that even though your strategy might be far-reaching and structured, it must remain agile. As Christensen asserts in Disruptive Strategy , a business’s strategy needs to evolve with the challenges and opportunities it encounters. Be prepared to pivot your KPIs as goals shift and communicate the reasons for change to your organization.

Which HBS Online Strategy Course is Right for You? | Download Your Free Flowchart

Improve Your Strategic Planning Skills

Strategic planning can benefit your organization’s vision, execution, and progress toward goals. If strategic planning is a skill you’d like to improve, online courses can provide the knowledge and techniques needed to lead your team and organization.

Strategy courses can range from primers on key concepts (such as Economics for Managers ), to deep-dives on strategy frameworks (such as Disruptive Strategy ), to coursework designed to help you strategize for a specific organizational goal (such as Sustainable Business Strategy ).

Learning how to craft an effective, compelling strategic plan can enable you to not only invest in your career but provide lasting value to your organization.

Do you want to formulate winning strategies for your organization? Explore our portfolio of online strategy courses and download the free flowchart to determine which is the best fit for you and your goals.

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What Are the Benefits of Long-Term Strategy & Retreats?

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Strategic, long-term planning benefits a small business by allowing it to be proactive in its growth, rather than by simply reacting to market conditions. Retreats are an efficient way to create a long-term plan, as they eliminate distractions caused by working on-site. Depending on where you hold your retreat and what extras you offer, you can improve your status as an employer of choice.

Implementing a new direction for your company without the time to test and tweak your ideas requires you to roll the dice on an initiative. Committing to a short-term schedule for a product launch or change in operations may not allow you to make adjustments based on the results you see occurring. Set long-term goals that let you track results and make any necessary adjustments.

Spreads Costs

Long-term strategy allows you to budget over a longer period for new initiatives. Trying to fund a new product line or division with cash on hand may not be possible. Using a loan to create something new increases your costs by adding interest. Budgeting a portion of your revenues or profits over a period of several years allows you to properly fund new initiatives without weakening your current operations or financial position.

Allows Test Marketing

A long-term strategy lets you roll out changes in phases and in smaller, more manageable segments. If you change the price of a product or add a new item to your line, do so in only one or two geographic areas to gauge the results. This cuts your losses if the initiative doesn't work, or allows you to make a change to your strategy before you commit all of your funds to it.

Eliminates Distractions

Retreats allow management to focus on a specific task by eliminating interruptions of subordinates, clients or suppliers. Emails, texts and phone calls at the workplace often interrupt employees. Limit outside communication to a few breaks each day during a retreat to focus more time on strategic planning.

Creates a Perk

Businesses often use retreats as an employee perk by holding them at an attractive location. The added benefit of a free, upscale room, nice dinners and a round of golf motivates employees to attend retreats. Use retreats as an incentive when hiring staff --- they'll see an enhanced benefits package. Inviting spouses or significant others helps key workers bond with each other and helps you create a stronger sense of team and family for your business.

  • Remodeling; Rest and Regroup; Bridget McCrea; October 2008

Sam Ashe-Edmunds has been writing and lecturing for decades. He has worked in the corporate and nonprofit arenas as a C-Suite executive, serving on several nonprofit boards. He is an internationally traveled sport science writer and lecturer. He has been published in print publications such as Entrepreneur, Tennis, SI for Kids, Chicago Tribune, Sacramento Bee, and on websites such Smart-Healthy-Living.net, SmartyCents and Youthletic. Edmunds has a bachelor's degree in journalism.

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Why leaders need a long-term view

In boardroom discussions, the focus should be on how strategies today can help predict behaviors tomorrow..

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A businesswoman uses a ladder and a telescope to gain a better view.

Photograph by RichVintage

When a business is going well, I’ve seen leadership teams conform to an unwritten 80-20 rule of thumb: They spend about 80 percent of their time focused on growth for the long term and only 20 percent managing the short term. But when things are not going well, I’ve observed the opposite: The temptation is to focus almost exclusively on the short term, with leaders spending a mere fraction of their time looking ahead.

An ultra-short-term focus, however, is not sustainable. As pressing as today’s demands are, as businesses continue to struggle with impact of COVID-19 and economic uncertainty, leaders should strive for balance between the short term and long term to produce value that benefits all stakeholders.

Admittedly, maintaining a long-term view has been challenging for business leaders who, over the course of the last year, were confronted by a pandemic and an economic crisis. In the early days of the pandemic, I witnessed the short term becoming the center of attention for leaders of companies where I am a board member, as well as at other firms. It’s a natural reaction during turbulent times when so much is changing day to day.

Consider dental supply companies, whose sales in the U.S. were cut by 50 percent or more in the second quarter of 2020 as dental offices closed and the provision of oral care plummeted. Similarly, as travel came to a virtual halt, the hospitality industry suffered. Accor , a global hospitality group with more than 5,000 properties and 10,000 food and beverage venues in 110 countries, reported a precipitous drop in its revenues — down 88.2 percent in the second quarter of 2020 on a “like-for-like” basis, and off 62.8 percent in the third quarter. Though business prospects have since improved across all industries, nearly half of the financial executives surveyed by PwC last summer said they expected revenues to decline by more than 10 percent in 2020.

At the other end of the spectrum, there has been dramatic growth in areas such as telehealth , which was projected to see a 65 percent increase in demand in 2020 alone. Even this positive scenario can cause management to concentrate almost exclusively on short-term opportunities to capture market share rather than on anticipating future customer requirements.

Absent a long-term view, leaders may inadvertently shortchange future prospects and value creation.

Generating value

In good times and in challenging ones, business leaders need to allocate capital and people for the benefit of all major stakeholders — employees, customers, shareholders, and society in general. As my colleagues and I wrote in a recent article in the Journal of Applied Corporate Finance , leaders have a responsibility to produce “sustainable increases in long-run value, and then help the stock market reflect, or prospective buyers recognize, that value.” A key practice in establishing long-term value creation is to use the net present value (NPV) test. In financial terms, an investment passes the NPV test when the discounted present value of its projected cash flows over time is greater than the cost of producing those cash flows.

What sounds straightforward becomes far more difficult if management is not investing enough of its energy and focus on the long term. Of course, any crisis and its impact must be managed in the short term — for example, controlling costs, avoiding supply chain disruptions, and rightsizing the workforce. Value creation, however, requires a longer-term view.

What leaders can do

In a world of uncertainty, company leaders and boards of directors need to keep perspective by balancing the short and long term. Here are some suggestions.

Focus on the known. Management and boards need to focus on what is known. For example, the pandemic is not going to last forever, nor will it be over within a few weeks. The latest projections from the World Health Organization are that COVID-19 vaccines will likely not be widely available until mid-2021 in developed economies, and it will be 2022 before the rest of the world gets vaccinated. Based on these projections, how would a company’s business be affected in the next three to four months, six to 12 months, or one to two years? By running various scenarios, management can decide on the best responses to both crisis and opportunity, which is especially helpful in capturing a stronger competitive advantage as the pandemic subsides and the next business conditions emerge.

Rightsize human capital. One reason a company grows faster than its competitors is that it has the best people and a low turnover rate. Amid a crisis, however, focusing almost exclusively on the short term may lead to decisions to lay off massive numbers of people without considering the cost of finding the right talent in the future or the implications of the best people being hired by competitors. Though layoffs and furloughs are often unavoidable during severe downturns, cutting costs in other areas such as office space and travel can help maintain the workforce so that mission-critical staff are not lost.

Keep a balanced perspective. As business resumes and evolves, companies can get back on track with a balanced perspective — which can be gained by extrapolating lessons learned in the short term for the long term. Airbnb, for example, saw an opportunity to switch its strategy, redesigning its website and its algorithm to show prospective travelers accommodations that were closer to home, so people could vacation without flying. Wayfair , the Boston-based e-commerce retailer of furniture and home goods, saw the crisis-accelerated trend toward more online purchasing as an opportunity. Restaurants also bore the brunt of the COVID-19 fallout and resulting changes in consumer behavior. Those that stayed afloat pivoted quickly, in some instances by offering curbside pickup and delivery. Now, leaders in the restaurant industry are looking forward and projecting behavior among post-pandemic consumers who will likely have high expectations for cleanliness and sanitation for on-site dining, while continuing to rely on drive-through, curbside pickup, delivery options, and touchless kiosks and ordering systems.

Although the future seems uncertain, that doesn’t mean business leaders cannot plan for it. Leaders can focus on the major areas that impact shareholder value: growth, profitability, capital requirements, and cash flow. Focusing on value creation for the long term will help companies weather the current storm and emerge even stronger.

Author profile:

  • Harry Kraemer  is professor of leadership at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management and a best-selling author of books on values-based leadership. An executive partner of one of the largest private equity firms in the U.S., he is an executive consultant and serves as a board member for numerous private and public companies.

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The differences between long-term and short-term planning

Last updated on: February 21, 2024

Sometimes, planning is easy – you know exactly where you want to go for lunch and your plan for the future is crystal clear.

But more often than not, planning is difficult – from lack of resources to lack of vision, from not knowing where and how to start to having difficulties with setting effective goals. The future can be unpredictable and planning can be tricky.

Yet, it’s not impossible. In this article, we’ll go over what long-term and short-term planning mean, what is the difference, as well as how to successfully do both. Of course, with examples included.

Table of Contents

What are long-term and short-term planning?

Let’s start by defining what long-term and short-term planning are.

What is short-term planning?

Short-term planning is usually considered to take 12 months or less. Your daily, weekly, monthly, even quarterly and yearly goals – all can be filed under “short-term goals.” They are stepping stones that will help you to reach your big goal(s).

That type of planning requires you to look at the current situation and fix potential issues as soon as possible. Sometimes “as soon as possible” takes a day, sometimes 6 months, depending on the complexity of the issue.

Here are some examples of short-term goals, divided into five categories: career , education, personal development, finances, and marketing.

  • Career goals : “Apply for a job”, “Make a website for your business.”
  • Academic goals : “Take another marketing course”, “Pass the AP Statistics exam.”
  • Personal development goals : “Start going to bed before midnight”, “ Track your time for a month”, “Join a gym.”
  • Financial goals : “Pay off the debt”, “Get a raise before the end of the year.”
  • Marketing goals : “Increase brand awareness”, “Boost website traffic.”

💡 If you need help with setting short-term goals, these articles can come to the rescue: How to plan your day and stay organized & How to make productivity plan in five easy steps . For easier planning, check out Online planner templates too.

What is long-term planning?

Long-term planning involves goals that take a longer time to reach and require more steps; they usually take a minimum of a year or two to complete. They aim to permanently resolve issues and reach and maintain success over a continued period.

We’ll discuss an exact strategy to set and complete long-term goals later in this article.

Before that, let’s go over a few examples of long-term goals:

  • Career goals : “Build a profitable business”, “Turn your passion into a career.”
  • Academic goals : “Get a Bachelor’s degree”, “Get a Master’s degree abroad.”
  • Personal development goals : “Learn a foreign language”, “Travel on all 7 continents.”
  • Financial goals : “Save for retirement”, “Become a millionaire.”

What is medium-term planning?

That’s not all, folks: there’s also medium-term planning . It entails applying more permanent solutions to short-term problems and implementing policies and procedures to make sure that those short-term problems won’t happen again. If a piece of equipment breaks, a short-term solution would be to fix it, while a medium-term solution would be to invest in a service contract.

Another example of medium-term planning is investing in employees’ training programs rather than organizing a workshop from time to time (which is a short-term solution).

Key differences between long-term and short-term planning

The most obvious difference between long-term and short-term planning is the amount of time each one takes; while short-term planning involves processes that take 12 months or less, long-term planning is, as the name suggests, longer – there’s no upper limit to the longevity of a long-term plan.

There’s an anecdote that Ingvar Kamprad, founder of IKEA, told a group of managers that it’s “important to think where we should be in 200 years.” (You don’t have to think that far ahead – a 5-year plan is completely fine.)

Another difference is their complexity: long-term planning is more elaborate, tactical, and involves more steps. As opposed to that, short-term planning is often quite straightforward. Short-term goals usually serve as milestones that get you to your long-term goal.

In business, short-term goals are mostly focused on internal issues, such as customer complaints or inefficient management, while long-term goals cover both external and internal issues. When you’re planning long-term, you need to be aware of external factors, like global trends and changes, political situation, the ways current events may affect the economy, and so on.

The difference between long-term and strategic planning

Another frequently asked question is: Is strategic planning the same as long-term planning? If not, what’s the difference between the two?

Strategic planning consists of statements and goals that determine things such as:

  • Where your company should be in the next couple of years and how to get there;
  • How to successfully respond to changes in the environment;
  • What’s the anticipated financial performance;
  • What’s the most effective business strategy.

Strategic plans are not actionable – that’s where long-term planning comes in.

Long-term planning determines concrete processes and actions needed to achieve strategic goals. It also focuses on setting priorities, aligning resources, forecasting, and handling unexpected changes.

In other words, strategic planning determines what and long-term planning determines how .

How to set long-term goals in 5 steps

As setting good long-term goals is the foundation of every other planning you’re going to do, it’s important to get it right. That can often be hard and overwhelming, especially if you’re making plans for the distant future, e.g. 10 years in advance – which is why we made this step-by-step guide.

Step 1: Define your vision

Ask yourself: What is your (or your company’s) vision? What is your purpose? What are your core values? If you’re a company: what problem do you want to solve and how would the world look without that problem?

Ideally, where would you want to be 3, 5, and 10 years from now? What is, right now, stopping you from achieving that? What changes do you need to make? If (or better to say, when ) you manage to achieve your goals, how different would things be, and in what way?

All these questions will help you clarify what do you want to achieve. The next step is – how to get there?

Step 2: Set SMART goals

If you’re sure in the direction you want to take, it’s time to set goals. They should be challenging, yet achievable, and most importantly, they should be SMART.

The examples I’ll provide to explain each letter of this acronym are mostly short-term goals as it’s easier to understand that way, but these criteria can (and should) be applied to any type of goal, including long-term goals.

  • Specific : Once I heard someone say that “goals should have their name and last name”, meaning they need to be as particular and well-defined as possible. “I want to find a job” is not a specific goal, while “I want to land a _____ position in ____ field, preferably in ____ type of company in ____ area” has a name, last name, even a middle name.
  • Measurable : In order to know if you’re making progress, you need to be able to measure it. That’s why setting goals such as “increase brand awareness” is not very good – how do you know if you accomplished it or not? Instead, try something like “get 5K followers on Instagram and 1K likes on our Facebook page.”
  • Attainable : As we mentioned above, the goals you set should be challenging, but possible to achieve. “Earn a million dollars in a week” is measurable and time-bound, but not realistic, at least not for most of us (that being said, if it’s realistic for you, go ahead and set that goal).
  • Relevant : Relevant goal is a goal that fits your vision and has importance to you. If you want to be a lawyer, setting a goal of graduating from medical school doesn’t make a lot of sense for your career path.
  • Time-bound : Give yourself a specific time frame to complete the goal; if it has multiple steps, impose a deadline for each milestone.

Step 3: Break down your goals into smaller ones

After you set your SMART goals, it’s time to break them down into smaller chunks, that will again be divided into series of actionable steps.

Big goals often consist of a few milestones that you need to reach; each one should become its own short-term or medium-term goal. Think of them as checkpoints in a race or levels in a game – you need to pass them all to get to the finish line and win.

Keep dividing it until your big goal becomes a weekly or daily to-do list. The more complicated the goal is, the more times you’ll have to break it down into smaller parts.

Let’s say you just got into university and your goal is to get your Bachelor’s degree.

  • First, you’ll divide it into 3 or 4 goals (depending on how many years it lasts): “finish 1st year”, “finish 2nd year”, and so on.
  • To be able to do that, you need to pass your exams, and each of the exams will become its own goal.
  • To pass each exam, you usually have to take quizzes, write papers, make presentations, etc; again, each of those pre-requirements becomes a subgoal.
  • Then you divide that into concrete steps: doing research, writing the first draft of your paper, editing it…

By making tiny steps like these, you’ll eventually and gradually accomplish your long-term goal.

Step 4: Prioritize

Go through your list of goals and put them in the order of their priority. That will facilitate making short-term goals and organizing your time, energy, and money in the right way. First focus on the goal(s) that will make the most difference and that align with your values the most.

Also, ask yourself: Are there some areas that need immediate assistance? Are any of those goals time-sensitive? What is the likely outcome of (not) making this a priority?

Step 5: Keep updating your list

Goals and priorities may change over time. Because of that, it would be a good idea to occasionally go through your list, make sure it’s up to date and change something if needed.

There are different types of planning: short-term, long-term, and medium-term. Short-term planning focuses on resolving present issues and takes 12 months or less.

Long-term planning is more complex and tactical and takes more time.

Medium-term planning means applying long-term solutions to short-term problems.

What all of them have in common is that all of them require thinking ahead, setting goals effectively, and problem-solving.

✉️ Do you find long-term and short-term planning difficult? What are your long-term and short-term goals? What is, according to you, the best way to plan for the future? Write to us at [email protected] for a chance to be featured in future articles.

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Dunja is a content manager passionate about time management and self-improvement. After years of trying out all the productivity techniques she managed to come across, her goal become to share her knowledge and help others to become the best, most successful versions of themselves.

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Why Long-Term Planning Is Important to Business and Investors

By Kevin Ballard

Updated on February 3, 2024

long term planning featured

“What are the benefits of a long-term strategy?” All things being equal, buying and holding is easier than frequent trading. If you decide to buy and hold for the long-term, then you want to invest in a company with a long-term outlook. This will ensure that they are operating on the same time horizon as you. Therefore increasing the likelihood that your interests are aligned.

We’ve arrived at Point 12 of Philip Fisher’s 15 points from his iconic book Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits . Point 12, in essence, asks “does the stock you’re analyzing have a short-term or long-term outlook?”

If the company you’re analyzing aims to stay in business for a long time, then they hopefully have a long-term outlook. Yes, some businesses can fall ass-backward into success (or at least appear to do soon). But, not many are so lucky.

This reminds me of Nassim Taleb’s Lindy effect, which I addressed in the Stock Valuation Spreadsheet post . The gist of the Lindy effect is that the longer something has existed, the longer it will continue to exist.

A lot of stakeholders depend on the company you’re analyzing to stay in business and be successful. These stakeholders include not only investors, but vendors, employees, and local economies.

  • The future is coming, like it or not

Why should a company bother with planning? Especially for the long-term?

As I write this, the year is 2020. A year that has shown us how volatile the world can be.

2030 will be here soon enough. If you’re investing your money in a stock – you probably want that company to be successful in 2030. Whether you still own those shares or not.

Sure, missing out on gains hurts. It’s not a good feeling to sell shares after a year of ownership only to see the stock skyrocket over the following decade. However, there’s still some solace in being smart enough to recognize that potential. Even if you got out too soon.

Plus, it’s sour grapes to want to see a company fail (unless you’re short, or unless they’re unethical). Again, one should consider the other stakeholders.

If you are holding onto the stock for the long-term, then the company having a long-range outlook is essential. You’ll still need to do periodic analysis, of course. Investing is relatively easy when you buy a company and it’s enormously successful for a long time. Meanwhile, paying you handsomely in capital gains and/or dividends.

Analysis is time-consuming. Analysis is risky . Mistakes can be made. If you make investments in companies with a long-term outlook, you increase the likelihood of having to spend less time analyzing.

  • Short-range outlook vs long-range outlook

“Tomorrow never comes.”

This was what a manager of mine often said, a long time ago, when I was working for a company with a very short-term mindset.

Long-term goals are built on short-term goals. So, short-term goals are important. Nobody’s disputing that.

There’s a balance to be struck between long-term and short-term, however. Investing in a business that sacrifices one for the other is risky. In order to determine if a balance exists, I think, you have to ask yourself if the achievement/failure of short-term goals is part of something bigger?

To clarify, short-term means within one year. Mid-term usually encompasses a range of 2-5 years out. Long-term is anything beyond that.

Speculate too far into the future, and there are too many variables to juggle. Time is volatility, and, in some respects, the world gets more chaotic as time goes by. Nevertheless, you want to be invested in a company that’s putting forth a good faith effort toward being proactive regarding the future and is managing its downside risk.

Does your company have a long-term outlook?

Like so many other aspects of investing, making a determination here is difficult. I’ve written many previous posts about the effect management has on a company’s performance . The people in management are the ones pulling the strings. The entire company operates within the culture they dictate. For better or for worse.

Fortunately, management’s ego makes the public eye somewhat irresistible. There is, typically, no shortage of articles or soundbites from a company’s management. So, use this to your advantage. Research management’s discussions of strategy to aid in determining whether they have a long-term outlook or not.

One way to do this is to simply search for “[company] goals”. Browse the results – particularly the news.

“Goals“ isn’t the only keyword you can use either. Here are some others you might try:

  • Projections

Furthermore, if you’ve read any of my other Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits inspired posts, you know I’m a big fan of analyzing a Company’s SEC Form 10-K . If you delve into this document and use Ctrl+F, you can find where they use those words, and in what context.

Pro tip: use search “Tools” and old 10-Ks to see what the company’s outlook was in the past. One year, three years, five years ago, or more. Were they setting long-term goals back then? Have they achieved them, or, were they just empty promises?

  • Example analysis of long term planning

Let’s put some of these suggestions into action and see what I find.

I’ll use FedEx Corporation (FDX) as an example.

I’ll start by looking about five years in the past and seeing what (if any) goals were stated at that time. Then, I’ll transition to the present to see if those goals were met.

A search for “fedex goals” turned up a snippet that stated the following: “The company’s long-term goals—like increasing profitable revenue, achieving 10% plus operating margin, and targeting 10%–15% annual EPS (earnings per share) growth – look achievable in the near future.”

fedex goals 2014

It will be pretty easy to judge if they were successful or not. However, after further reading, these goals are actually from 2009 and are conveyed by a third party (the author). That’s not to say they’re fabricated. Just that they didn’t come “from the horse’s mouth.”

Let’s move on to the 2014 Form 10-K.

Searching for “goal” and its synonyms in the 10-K turned up a couple of mentions of a 2013 Profit Improvement Program. Here was the gist of that: “We will continue to work towards our goal of annual profitability improvement at FedEx Express of $1.6 billion by the end of 2016.”

This would qualify more as a medium-term plan, in my opinion, but it looks like it’s the best I’m going to find.

Okay, so that’s a little bit to work with. Let’s see how these plans panned out.

Here’s what I was able to find:

I should note some of the assumptions I made.

First, I looked at the operating margin and EPS growth for the consolidated company – not at any specific segment.

Alternatively, for the profit improvement goal, I looked at the FedEx Express segment solely and referred to operating profit . I could not find any reference to segment net profit. The improvement was measured from the 2013 operating profit of $555 million.

So, what do we see? Way off on the operating margin, but the other two goals were easily beat.

This tells me that FedEx does make, at least, mid-term plans. And, they don’t appear to be “window dressing.”

I think, as a potential investor, you can have some confidence in FedEx’s long-term outlook. At least until Fred Smith retires…

  • What are the benefits of a long-term strategy?

You may or may not be a long-term investor. Whatever your investing timeline, I think you can agree that “setting it and forgetting it” is simpler than buying and selling repeatedly.

Early on in this blog, I wrote a number of posts comparing the CCI indicator with a buy and hold strategy . Frequently, buying and holding won. But…not always.

In any event, judging a stock’s long-term outlook is time-consuming. It’s also very subjective. So, don’t let it take a disproportionate amount of your time. As with most things, you should be able to get a feel for management’s tone with a reasonable amount of research.

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About Kevin Ballard

I’ve worked in corporate finance for almost fifteen years. I have a bachelor’s in Finance and an MBA. I am also a Certified Management Accountant. At one time I had my securities license (Series 7) and Health and Life insurance licenses. What’s more important is that I like to learn and always seek to truly understand the subject I am studying. Learn more about Invest Some Money's Editorial Process .

The Strategic Advantage: Benefits of Long-Term Planning

#projectmanagement, table of content, what are long-term goals, what is long term planning, why is planning important, benefits of long-term planning in business, benefits of strategic planning process.

While planning can be effortless in some instances—like deciding where to grab lunch or having a crystal-clear vision of your future—more often than not, it poses challenges. External factors such as limited resources, a vague vision, uncertainty about where to begin, and the complexity of setting meaningful goals can make the path ahead seem unpredictable and daunting.

Recent statistics reveal an eye-opening fact: a staggering 25% of Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) in the UK choose to forgo using a business plan. This decision leaves them vulnerable, as they run the risk of losing their sense of direction and missing out on a crucial strategy for propelling their small business up to the next level of growth.

Nevertheless, it’s crucial to acknowledge that, despite its intricacies, effective long-term planning remains within reach.

Recognizing what qualifies as a long-term goal holds significant importance. Long-term goals are those ambitious targets set goals that inspire you to think big, aiming for the distant horizon.

For individuals, these various long-term goals, short-term goals, and mid-term goals can encompass career aspirations, personal growth, or a fusion of both. Achieving long-term goals, whether in your professional journey or personal life, usually requires you to step out of your comfort zone and commit to sustained effort over an extended period.

For organizations, long-term goals often revolve around strategic goals, expanding market reach, sustainability endeavors, or fostering innovation. Just like individuals, organizations must push their limits, adapt to changing landscapes, and consistently work towards achieving these substantial long-term objectives.

long term goals

Long-term planning involves crafting strategic objectives that require a significant amount of time to achieve. It’s all about setting your sights on future goals and taking steps to realize them.

Typically, these goals are not quick wins; they involve a series of stages and may take at least a year or even a couple of to five years to achieve strategic goals within reach. The essence of long-term planning lies in finding enduring solutions to challenges, paving the way for sustained success over an extended period.

Long-term planning is equally applicable to personal and career aspirations. It encompasses the development and execution of strategies that can drive professional growth in specific industries or define the overall direction of your personal life. For instance, consider these examples of long-term organizational goals across various areas:

1. Financial goals

You might devise a long-term strategy to accumulate or make money to create more substantial wealth through your own business or to create secure money for your retirement.

2. Personal development goals

These could involve ambitions big goals like traveling the world extensively or the same goal of becoming proficient in a new foreign language one.

3. Career goals

Your long-term small business potential career aspirations might entail transforming your passions into a profession, ascending to an executive role within a company, a management consultancy or even the ultimate goal of establishing your own profitable small business itself.

In each of these cases, long-term planning provides the framework for envisioning and eventually achieving these significant life milestones. What’s especially valuable about long-term strategic planning is that it fosters creative thinking. It’s a unique advantage. Companies can keep innovating and stay ahead of the curve by encouraging employees to explore new ideas and think beyond the usual boundaries.

Furthermore, long-term strategic planning offers a practical way to allocate resources effectively while increasing operational efficiency. It helps organizations pinpoint where to invest and allows them to prioritize initiatives based on their potential impact. This approach ensures that resources are used wisely and that the most promising projects get the attention they deserve.

Strategic Management Plan Vs. Long-term Plan

A Strategic Management Plan , often referred to as a “Strategic Plan,” serves as the North Star of an organization. It’s a comprehensive, high-level document that outlines an organization’s mission, vision, values, and overarching objectives. It defines the strategic direction, including management discussions regarding major goals that steer the entire company toward its desired future state.

Whereas a Long-term Plan , as the name suggests, is a detailed roadmap for achieving specific objectives over an extended period. It takes the strategic goals outlined in the Strategic Management Plan and breaks them down into actionable steps and initiatives.

Strategic planning plays a pivotal role in guiding an organization’s path to success. It involves setting the course for where your company should be in the coming years and crafting strategies to reach those milestones.

Additionally, it helps you navigate and respond effectively to changes in your business environment, anticipate financial performance, and establish the most efficient overall profitable business strategy.

However, strategic plans, on their own, are more like blueprints for the future; they lack the specific, actionable steps required for execution.

This is where the well-set strategic plan , long-term plans , and- long-term planning come into play, filling in the details. Long-term planning serves as the bridge between strategic vision and practical action. It hones in on concrete processes and actions needed to bring those strategic goals to life.

Long-term planning is where you determine how to prioritize tasks, allocate resources to budget requirements, make forecasts, and adapt to unexpected changes. To put it simply, strategic planning tells you what needs to be achieved, while long-term planning provides the essential roadmap for how to achieve it.

Together, they create a dynamic framework that guides an organization toward its objectives, ensuring that goals completed projects are not just set but also realized.

Fostering Long-term Commitment

Embracing a long-term perspective encourages substantial investment and an element of calculated risk.

By balancing your focus on both immediate short-term demands and long-term objectives, you can keep stakeholders, including your valuable employees, genuinely invested.

This commitment is instrumental to support employees engagement, shaping your market and brand perception, and enhancing your employer brand. It aligns everyone, from the right talent to loyal customers, with your overarching mission.

To achieve this, articulate your company strategy in a way that transcends the focus on mere profit and contributes positively to the world. Communicate it in a compelling, authentic, and motivating manner.

Sustaining the Right Priorities

Short-term urgencies can easily lead organizations astray, causing them to deviate from their long-term path, particularly if resources are continually diverted to extinguish small fires.

While daily and immediate demands are inevitable, it’s crucial to remain steadfast in your priorities. Failure to do so could result in your competitors achieving their goals ahead of you, potentially overshadowing your business.

A long-term outlook empowers you as the captain, confidently steering a substantial vessel. Having a clear strategy and succession plan already in place makes you a more effective leader, preventing you from merely chasing one short-term ‘priority’ after another and achieving little of lasting significance.

Streamlining Resource Management

Efficient resource allocation, especially concerning your business’s talent, is essential. Your top-performing resources should be directed toward strategic goals that yield the most significant value.

With a long-term strategic perspective, resource management becomes more straightforward. It becomes easier to assess the return on investment (ROI) of resources.

If resources are misallocated on non-strategic tasks, the business plan and KPIs can support reallocating them. If critical objectives lack the necessary skills and talent, the business case for hiring becomes clearer.

Moreover, non-strategic and often low-value activities can be scrutinized and phased out as needed.

Encouraging Measurement

Short-term priorities can lead to knee-jerk reactions and a frenzied “ all hands on deck ” approach, which may result in numerous tactical efforts.

Adopting a long-term perspective naturally promotes progress measurement. You can track key performance indicators (KPIs) to gauge whether you’re moving in the right direction and achieving critical milestones or falling short.

The adoption of a long-term perspective, augmented by the integration of project time tracking tools, not only mitigates the frenzied approach often associated with short-term priorities but also facilitates comprehensive progress measurement.

Short-term priorities can sometimes trigger impulsive, all-encompassing responses, leading to a flurry of tactical efforts.

However, with a long-term outlook supported by sophisticated project time tracking tools such as TimeTrack , the focus shifts towards methodical and strategic progress tracking.

Enhancing Engagement

Short-term priorities can create a sense of urgency and activity but often leave employees feeling as though they’re stuck in a cycle of perpetual motion. With a long-term perspective, you can engage and motivate your team more effectively.

It provides a sense of purpose, progression, and meaningful achievement, aligning everyone with a shared vision that extends far beyond immediate tasks.

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Boosts Employee Retention and Satisfaction

Research indicates that many local government employees are grappling with feelings of disconnection, burnout, and workplace incivility post-pandemic.

However, strategic planning can rekindle employee engagement and a sense of ownership over their work. It can also catalyze initiatives like career growth opportunities, perks, and the cultivation of a more positive work environment.

Addressing these issues is crucial to preventing high turnover in the public sector. Effective strategic planning includes enhancing employee onboarding, promoting feedback mechanisms, and establishing a robust recognition system.

Properly executed, it can reduce instances of micromanagement, empowering employees and bolstering job satisfaction.

Enhances Communication Between Employers and Employees

Bridging the communication gap is pivotal to the success of strategic planning.

It begins with fostering participation and dialogue between managers and employees, demonstrating a shared commitment to achieving organizational objectives.

When employees understand the company’s activities and purpose through strategic planning, it becomes easier for them to see the link between their performance, company success, and compensation.

This, in turn, cultivates innovation and creativity among both employees and managers, contributing to operational efficiency and the organization’s growth.

Enhances Durability and Sustainability

In an ever-changing business landscape, strategic planning is instrumental in anticipating and preparing for potential internal and external disruptions. As industry demands and customer expectations evolve continuously, companies with a strong foundation and forward-thinking approach are better equipped to navigate the challenges ahead.

Boosts Profitability

Strategic planning involves thorough research providing valuable market insights. This enables organizations to develop effective sales and marketing strategies, ultimately driving profitability. By establishing key performance indicators (KPIs) and aligning the organization, achieving sales targets becomes more manageable. Employees gain clarity on their responsibilities and their impact on the organization.

Secures Longevity of the Business

The business landscape is rapidly evolving, and companies that lack a solid foundation and rely solely on opportunistic approaches may not endure. Statistics reveal that one in three industry-leading companies will lose their top position within five years. Focused strategic planning is akin to concentrating light into a laser’s precision, capable of cutting through obstacles.

Empowers Individuals within the Organization

Effective communication and dialogue at all levels empower employees, making them feel indispensable to the company’s success. Organizations should decentralize strategic planning by involving lower-ranking managers and employees, fostering a sense of ownership.

Establishes a Clear Direction

Strategic planning not only imparts a sense of purpose and direction to an organization but also aids in setting realistic goals and objectives aligned with the vision and mission. It provides the framework and boundaries needed for efficient resource allocation and sound decision-making across areas like budgeting, hiring, and operational processes.

Final Thoughts

Many prominent multinational corporations employ strategic planning as a cornerstone for their decision-making processes. Crafting these plans indeed demands significant investments of time, effort, and financial resources.

Yet, a thoughtfully crafted strategic plan stands as a powerful catalyst for driving organizational expansion, realizing key objectives, and enhancing employee contentment.

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Being a digital marketer, I have been working with different clients and following strict deadlines. For me, learning the skill of time management and tracking was crucial for juggling between tasks and completing them. So, writing about time management and monitoring helps me add my flavor to the knowledge pool. I also learned a few things, which I am excited to share with all of you.

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Small business: The benefits of long-term planning

Business planning

You build a business for the long haul, so it is vital to have a long-term plan that extends five years into the future.

Broadly speaking, all business plans can be categorised into short-term, mid-term and long-term.

Short-term plans focus on immediate concerns and opportunities. For example, you may run a clearance sale to reduce excess stock in a given quarter.

Mid-term plans look at solutions to address both short to mid-term challenges. For example, if fraud is an ever-increasing threat to your business, you are likely to establish stringent internal control, invest in staff training and prevention tools as part of the continued efforts to keep your company safe.

Long-term planning for small businesses, on the other hand, looks at the business strategically and your ambitions for the business. The plans can range from what value you want the company to worth after five years, how the business can be diversified, to who is going to take over and run the company in the future.

In this article, our small business accountants in London look at a few long-term plans that can benefit small business owners and their companies.

Business growth planning

Every business exists to make money, but how much you want to grow and how you can achieve the target set largely depend on what long-term plans you have to fuel that growth.

There are several ways to grow a business, including:

  • Raise more capital – you borrow money to boost resources, leading to an increase in production or offer more services to your customers.
  • Sell online and internationally – the concept here is to grow by selling more products/services to people without the constraint of physical boundaries. For example, you turn your website into a shopfront and run campaign that reaches a large pool of international customers.
  • Franchise – you become a franchisor, attracting franchisees to sell your products or services throughout the country or even internationally.
  • Innovate – you improve or create a new product or service, or you find a new way of integrating technology to disrupt the market.
  • Merger and acquisition – you merge with or acquire another business.

One of the tools that small business owners use to identify growth opportunities is through the use of management accounts, which should be sent by your accountants to you every month. If you’d like help with management accounts, like how you can use the data to your advantage, contact our small business accountants on 020 8108 0090 .

Business skills planning

Considering that the business landscape is regularly shaped by global events and new consumer trends are being developed over time, many small business owners know that they can’t afford to stay complacent. Accordingly, they need a strategy to respond, transform, innovate or even to reinvent themselves.

Implementing any strategy that can put your business ahead of the game is likely to require solid business skills planning. This process starts with developing a clear vision of what the business needs to thrive in the future, before identifying the skills that are required to achieve that.

Subsequently, you can choose to develop the new skills or capabilities in house, acquire through new talent or partner with another company which have the skills that you lack.

Long-term debt planning

If you look to grow your business rapidly, chances are you need extra capital from a bank or a group of investors. If it involves a bank loan secured against an asset, it is called debt financing. In this case, it is vital to know to plan and see how your business can generate extra income to pay off the debt.

If it involves investors, they may offer debt financing or equity financing. Equity financing means investors ask for a percentage of ownership in exchange for the money your company requires.

Talk to our small business accountants based in London, Putney and Richmond-upon-Thames if you are considering extra capital. We can help to make sure your company accounts are accurate, something that the bank or investors will look to scrutinise before lending you money.

You may also like to read this article Small Business: How to attract investors in which we share good tips.

Succession planning

Knowing that everyone retires at some point, smart small business owners would kick-start a succession plan once the business has achieved financial stability. This is because a succession plan can help to ensure that the company you’ve taken years to build will continue to operate with minimum disruption should something happen to you.

More importantly, it takes years to prepare and train potential successors – some of them may even choose to leave halfway through the training.

Exit planning

If you have no intention to find a successor, then a good alternative is to sell your business. The best time to sell your business is when the sales and profits are strong – ironically, this is also the period when most small business owners find it hard to let go. Having a plan, however, may help you to detach yourself as it is now your goal is to sell when the time comes.

Other types of long-term planning

Not all long-term goals focus on profitability or exit strategy. Some highly refreshing long-term goals focus on the environment like how to create a workplace that has little or no carbon footprint. It may also focus on the company culture, such as fostering a culture that promotes trust and honesty.

5 long-term planning tips

Long-term planning is undoubtedly beneficial but not every small business owner is ready to embrace it. One of the reasons, we have found from talking to seasoned entrepreneurs, is that some people find the prospect daunting. Also, long-term planning may not work for certain industries who need to adapt very quickly to changing consumer trends.

But if you are keen to give long-term planning a go, you may find the following five tips help the process.

1. Organise into stages

One of the ways to make long-term strategies less daunting is to break them into stages, with each stage having its own mini goal(s) and detailing tasks needed to achieve the said goal(s). Having a timeframe for each task and who should be responsible for it are also vital.

2. Involve everyone when necessary

If the long-term plan is about where the company is heading in five years’ time, then it makes sense to involve every team member. Hear their concerns, discuss any disagreements, use feedback to fine-tune your plan.

3. Acknowledge the unknown

You can plan but you can’t accurately predict the future. Both good and bad things may happen to your business along the way – like nature may throw you a curveball, the rise of the middle class in developing countries may create tremendous opportunities for you, market may swing to a territory that is at odds with your plan at a certain point, to name but a few. This is why it is essential to make use of the scenario planning technique when you are creating long-term plans.

4. Review and fine-tune

A good plan isn’t carved in stone nor sits on the shelf collecting dust. A good plan is regularly reviewed and fine-tuned to make sure that you are adapting. Quite a few small business owners find this part challenging as they juggle with an endless list of tasks daily. The key, of course, is to delegate and engage at the right level.

5. Stay positive

As a leader, you already know that things don’t always go your way. Learning to accept setbacks and focusing on finding solutions will strengthen your leadership skill. So stay positive by keeping your eyes on the ultimate goal.

Small business owners trust Tax Agility

Running a small business takes courage and determination. Successful small business owners also know they need an honest partner like Tax Agility who can work cohesively with them and help to take the business to the next level.

Our services to small businesses in London, Putney and Richmond-upon-Thames include:

  • Outsourced payroll services
  • Management consultancy

Management consultancy is an area often overlooked and must be given airtime here. In essence, it is about helping small business owners like you to unlock business potential based on financial data, accurate budget and forecasts.

At Tax Agility, our small business accountants are also experienced management consultants. We seek to understand your business and your aspirations first. After getting a good grip on your business, we strive to deliver the following three key benefits to your business:

  • How you can reign in financial control by having accurate data
  • How you can make informed decisions that spur growth
  • How the numbers can help you to review, measure and optimise

If the benefits listed above are what you are looking for, then it is time to give our ICAEW Chartered Accountants a call on 020 8108 0090 .

Alternatively, you can use the contact us form to get in touch.

You may also like:

  • Small Business: 5 ways to get new customers
  • Small Business: How to attract investors
  • Small Business: Managing business risk
  • Small Business: The benefits of long-term planning
  • Small Business: The benefits of networking
  • Small Business: Simplify marketing to increase sales
  • Small Business: Planning and optimising your workforce
  • Small Business: Win customers with a strong online presence
  • Small business: Gain competitive advantage through outsourcing
  • Small Business: Delivering excellent customer service
  • Small Business: Adapting to changes in social media
  • Small Business: Use technology to your advantage
  • Small Business: Protect your business against fraud

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  • How to accomplish big things with long- ...

How to accomplish big things with long-term goals

Caeleigh MacNeil contributor headshot

Long-term goals are objectives you want to achieve months or years down the road. Setting this type of goal gives your work purpose, helps you make better decisions, and offers a hefty dose of daily motivation. In this article we explain how you can use long-term goals to accomplish big things over time, with examples.

When you think of an ideal future for your work, what do you see? Perhaps you envision yourself launching a new global product, hitting record sales numbers, or recruiting the best talent in your field. But while it’s easy to imagine those dream scenarios, actually getting there is another story. That’s where long-term goals can help. 

Setting long-term goals helps turn your daydreams into concrete objectives that you can work towards with intention. Aside from helping you achieve difficult things, they’re also a useful tool to prioritize your work and decide what success looks like for you. 

What are long-term goals?

Long-term goals vs. short-term goals.

Long-term goals give your work direction and purpose. They’re usually made up of smaller short-term goals , which are the stepping stones that help you accomplish your larger goals. While long-term goals are your north star, short-term goals make the work feel less daunting by breaking it up into actionable steps. 

For example, imagine you and your team created a new app and set a long-term goal to reach one million downloads within two years. That objective guides your decisions and defines what success looks like for your app. Now, think of the smaller actions you need to take to reach your larger objective—those are your short-term goals. For instance, you might set a short-term goal to create an email referral campaign within the next month.

Is it important to set long-term goals?

Long-term goals can help you tackle big objectives at work and in your personal life. Here’s how. 

Work with intention

According to a 2020 report , some 86% of leaders say defining a purpose is essential to a successful growth strategy. After all, when you’re clear about what you want, you’re much more likely to get it. 

Long-term goals help with that clarity, because setting them encourages you to intentionally decide what kind of future you’re striving for. Instead of working aimlessly, long-term goals give you focus and ensure that your daily work is chipping away at something that really matters. 

Define success

When you set a long-term goal, you’re deciding what success looks like to you. Your goal gives you a concrete benchmark to measure progress and determine whether or not you’ve achieved your objective. 

For example, if you set a vague intention to “increase sales revenue,” it’s difficult to measure progress and success. By clarifying your long-term goal to hit 2 million dollars in sales revenue in the next five years, you give your team a clear vision of success to aim for. 

Make better decisions

Picture this: you’re walking aimlessly around town, and are faced with a split in the road. Do you go left or right? Since you don’t have a destination in mind, that decision is much harder to make. When you’re headed to a specific location, the choice is easy—just take the road that leads where you want to go. 

While many decisions aren’t as simple as left or right, a long-term goal can be your compass. When you’re faced with a choice, you can evaluate how each option might help you reach your goal. For example, if your team’s long-term goal is to double mobile web traffic to your homepage, you can point to that goal if you need to push back on requests to optimize your homepage for desktop. 

Stay motivated

Long-term goals are also a powerful motivational tool. When psychologists tested the impact of different motivational techniques on group performance, they found goal setting was one of the most effective. Just setting a handful of specific, ambitious goals boosted the participants’ performance into the 80th percentile.

Specifically, long-term goals help with intrinsic motivation —the drive to succeed that comes from within yourself, rather than external factors like praise or compensation. That’s because when you’re striving towards long-term goals, your day-to-day work has a clear purpose. 

6 steps to set and achieve long-term goals

The best long-term goals take a bit of planning. Here’s how to create goals and stick with them for the long haul. 

1. Visualize your ideal future

Before you create your goals, you have to decide what you want to achieve. Keep in mind that long-term goals are a big commitment. To create goals you can stick with, make sure they really matter to you and align with your values. This helps you stay motivated and avoid burnout . 

If you’re setting long-term objectives for your business , this means consulting with your mission , vision statement , and company values . If you’re setting personal work goals, try to identify your values first. Ask yourself what’s most important to you and what has fulfilled you most in the past—for example, you might value creativity, customer interaction, or organization.  

2. Write SMART goals

Goals should be clearly defined and falsifiable, so you have a concrete path to success. Luckily, the SMART goal framework makes it easy to create clear and measurable goals. SMART is an acronym that stands for: 

Here’s an example of a SMART goal: “This year, the engineering team will launch a mobile-first company website optimized for iOS and Android devices.” It specifies the type of website and what qualities it should possess, allows you to measure success based on whether or not the website has launched, is attainable (assuming you have sufficient engineering resources), and can realistically be achieved within the specified time frame. 

 3. Prioritize your goals

Now that you’ve set goals, it’s time to prioritize them . It can be tempting to try and tackle all your objectives at once, but that’s usually not realistic. You have to take into account what resources are available —including your own personal bandwidth. 

To prioritize, start by listing out all your long-term goals. Highlight which ones are most important to you. Make a note of when you want to achieve each goal, and estimate how long it will take. Based on those factors, decide which goals you want to focus on right away, and which ones you’ll put on hold until more bandwidth opens up. 

4. Break your long-term goals into short-term goals

Long-term goals take hard work to achieve, so it’s normal for them to feel a bit daunting at first. That’s where short-term goals come into play. These smaller stepping stones break the work down into bite-sized tasks you can tackle within a shorter time frame, such as a day, week, or month. 

To set short-term goals, write down all the tasks you need to accomplish in order to reach your long-term goal. Think of them as dependencies —hitting these goals unblocks your ultimate, long-term goal. Then, turn each of those dependencies into its own SMART goal. 

For example, imagine your team has set a long-term goal to create a new customer service process in the next six months. You could break it up into the following steps: 

This week, collect feedback and ideas from the customer service team. 

This month, audit the current process and identify areas of opportunity.

In two months, collect customer feedback and identify common pain points. 

In three months, submit a business case to executive stakeholders that outlines your proposed changes. 

In four months, finalize your project plan .

In five months, train customer service representatives in the new processes. 

In six months, roll out the new process to all customer service teams. 

5. Make a plan to track your progress

In order for long-term goals to be effective, they should be connected to your day-to-day work. That means instead of setting and forgetting your goals, make a plan to regularly check in and update your progress—for example, at the end of each day or week. And with the short-term goals you’ve set, it will be easier to gauge your progress and determine if you’re on track for your long-term goals. 

Using a project management tool can help streamline this process. For example, when you create a long-term goal in Asana, you can set a due date and create automated reminders to update your goal progress. And within each long-term goal, you can create short-term goals to break work down into manageable chunks—each with its own timeframe and scheduled reminders. 

7. Be flexible

Things change, and that’s okay. When you plan to achieve something months or years down the road, it’s normal for unexpected events to knock things off track—or for your own perspective and goals to shift. Keep in mind that your long-term goals aren’t set in stone. Rather, they’re a living document that you can adjust over time. 

Staying flexible with your goals can also help when unexpected opportunities arise. Sometimes if you fixate on a specific outcome, it can be easy to overlook promising growth opportunities. For example, imagine your company has set a long-term goal to enter a new international market—but a competitor gets there first. Instead of pursuing that same goal, you might consider adjusting your objective. You could focus on differentiating your product from the competition in order to target a different audience within that international market. 

40 examples of long-term goal

Long-term goals can help in every area of your life—including your professional life and personal development. Take a look at 40 different types of goals , with examples. 

Long-term business goals

Long-term business goals can come in many forms, including strategic goals and big hairy audacious goals (BHAGs) . Your long-term business goals might focus on these areas: 

1. Increase revenue

2. Become or stay profitable

3. Improve the function of a specific department, like customer service

4. Grow your customer base

5. Launch a new product or service

6. Expand to a new country or region

7. Improve hiring practices

8. Rebrand your company

9. Improve operating efficiency

10. Increase employee satisfaction

 Long-term team goals

Long-term goals can also help shape your team culture, increase productivity, and encourage collaboration. For example, you could set long-term team goals to: 

11. Hire skilled new team members

12. Develop a process for cross-functional collaboration

13. Reach a specific revenue or sales target within your team

14. Organize regular offsites to promote team building

15. Document and share important team processes

16. Establish a regular feedback cycle for direct reports

17. Start a mentorship or buddy program for new hires

18. Develop a post-mortem process for completed projects

19. Create new areas of responsibility within your team

20. Identify new professional development opportunities for direct reports

Long-term career goals

There’s a reason one of the most common job interview questions is: “ Where do you see yourself in five years?” Long-term professional development goals help shape and grow your career. In that vein, here are some example career goals to consider: 

21. Find your dream job or career

22. Start your own business

23. Become a team manager

24. Learn a difficult new skill, like a new programming language

25. Find a fulfilling side-hustle

26. Pursue a new certification or degree

27. Improve your work-life balance

28. Grow your professional network

29. Lead a department

30. Pitch and manage a new project 

Long-term personal and financial goals

Long-term goals are just as valuable for your personal life. Here are some examples of how long-term goals can help improve your health, finances, skills, and more: 

31. Learn a foreign language

32. Learn to play an instrument

33. Expand your social network

34. Compete in a difficult event, like a marathon

35. Learn to play a sport 

36. Have or adopt a child

37. Find a partner

38. Grow your savings account balance

39. Improve your credit score

40. Buy your first home

Grow more with long-term goals

Regardless of what you want to achieve, long-term goals can help you get there. Setting long-term objectives gives structure to dreams that may have previously seemed out of reach, and empowers you to strategically tackle them over time. And with these steps and examples, you can stop dreaming, start planning, and tackle those big goals once and for all. 

Regardless of the type of goal you set, make sure you have a way to track progress towards your goals. When you can visualize how your short-term goals are contributing to your long-term objectives, you’re more motivated and more likely to stay on track. Try goals with Asana to set and achieve strategic goals. 

Related resources

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Unveiling LRP: Understanding What is Long-Range Planning in Business

Exploring the fundamentals of long-range planning (lrp).

Long-Range Planning (LRP) is a strategic activity that businesses undertake to establish objectives and craft the tactics to fulfill them over a broad timescale, often spanning three to five years, if not longer. LRP equips businesses with a vision for their preferred future, delineating the long-term trajectory and facilitating anticipation of market trends and potential challenges.

This forward-looking approach is vital for various operational aspects, such as scheduling production in the manufacturing sector. Comprehensive LRP endeavors often involve powerful analytical tools, including, but not limited to, SWOT analysis , to uncover opportunities and mitigate risks within the organizational environment.

Additionally, software solutions like o9’s Integrated Business Planning (IBP) software streamline LRP by improving visibility over extended horizons, contributing to enhanced financial outcomes by bolstering operational effectiveness and diminishing unnecessary waste.

The Intersection of Long-Range and Strategic Planning

Visioning the future: crafting mission and vision statements.

Developing cogent mission and vision statements is a pivotal element of LRP, defining the organization’s purpose and aspirations. By cementing these underpinning declarations, an entity crystallizes its strategic direction, providing a beacon for all subsequent decision-making processes.

For instance, a consumer electronics company might devise a mission statement centered around innovation and user experience, whereas its vision statement may project becoming a dominant player in emerging techmarkets. Financially, these clarifications align budgets and expenditures with strategic priorities, promoting a robust and sustainable expansion. Reflecting this in financial planning involves synchronizing capital investment and resource allocation with envisaged pathways, reinforcing the congruity between monetary policy and long-term corporate ambitions.

Designing a Business Roadmap: Steps to Developing your Long-Range Plan

Identifying goals and setting objectives.

The heart of LRP lies in formulating precise goals that align with an organization’s broader mission. Setting these targets is a multi-faceted exercise involving a thorough understanding of the company’s position and an astute assessment of economic indicators and industry trends. For a healthcare provider, such goals might revolve around expanding patient care services or integrating breakthrough technological solutions.

Mapping these objectives into a feasible plan demands a meticulous evaluation of internal capabilities against market opportunities . Furthermore, projection exercises play a key role as they enable estimation of future demand scenarios, providing a factual basis for strategic deliverables. Firms often employ financial models to simulate different futures, helping to insulate the business against volatility and grounding the strategy in practical, achievable expectations.

Conducting Comprehensive Business Analysis

An exhaustive analysis forms the foundation of any robust LRP strategy. Distinguishing it from iterative short-term planning, LRP requires a deep dive into both internal and external factors that could influence the organization’s performance over the years ahead. This may encompass evaluating broad economic conditions, legislations, technological advancements, consumer behavior shifts, competitive landscapes, and operational workflows.

Precision engineering firms, as an example, might conduct LRP to anticipate material cost fluctuations, regulatory changes, or new entrants that could disrupt existing supply chains. Resources like intheBlk and o9’s IBP provide insightful analytics that inform these extended-period plans. By leveraging dynamic forecasting tools and revising projections with emergent market data, companies adapt more proactively to industry ebbs and flows, integrating budget and forecast data with enterprise software to refine financial expectations.

Projections and Forecasts: Planning for Future Demand

Accurately anticipating future consumption patterns stands central to effective LRP. A pivotal aspect of this is the generation of forecasts that inform product development cycles, inventory management, and capacity planning. For instance, a luxury goods retailer might leverage historical sales data, economic indicators, and consumer trends to predict future product demand.

Progressive LRP incorporates adaptable forecasting methodologies that adjust for new market intelligence, ensuring plans stay responsive to evolving business climates. Moreover, techniques like scenario planning, which envisage multiple potential future states, aid organizations in navigating economic uncertainty. Essentially, tools that offer potent forecasting capabilities, such as o9’s IBP software, can integrate multifaceted data streams, providing a comprehensive view that aids in refining supply chain robustness, minimizing risks, and sharpening competitiveness.

LRP in Action: Implementation Strategies

Translating LRP into practical steps is vital for tangible outcomes. Adeptly laying out these steps involves crafting actionable initiatives that mirror strategic objectives. For businesses in the renewable energy sector, this could involve investment timelines for infrastructure development or diversifying into new markets. Integration of advanced planning tools for risk assessment, business model analysis, and operational feasibility studies is crucial.

Financial Planning & Analysis (FP&A) platforms distinctly contribute to this translation from plan to action. Clear distinction exists between the roles of budgeting and forecasting within this context—while budgeting tightly controls immediate fiscal periods, flexible forecasts adapt to immediate dynamics. These components, loaded into accounting systems, streamline monitoring processes and allow for agile responses to business performance against set benchmarks.

Maximizing the Benefits: Tools for Effective Long-Range Planning

Utilizing swot for strategic advantage.

A SWOT analysis is an influential tool in devising effective LRP, beneficial for dissecting an organization’s relative competencies and identifying market gaps potentially conducive to expansion. Augmenting LRP with a SWOT examination provides a four-pronged dimensional view of the business landscape.

For example, a software development company leveraging SWOT might highlight their efficient agile development methodologies (strength), recognize an overreliance on a single client (weakness), capitalize on the burgeoning demand in mobile apps (opportunity), and protect against intensifying competition (threat). SWOT prepares businesses to allocate resources prudently and ascend market positions deftly by examining internal and external factors.

Additionally, it aids proactive threat mitigation by anticipating and planning against potential disruptions, such as new regulatory policies or disruptive innovations, ensuring resilience and sustained growth.

Understanding Business Models with In-depth Analysis

LRP pivots around an astute understanding of business models to navigate the future effectively. A comprehensive business model analysis discerns the operability and profitability of an enterprise’s strategic approach in prospective environments. For an e-commerce retailer, this may comprise scrutinizing their distribution networks, customer acquisition strategies, and partnerships.

In-depth analysis affords a close examination of the various components that constitute the business model to identify areas of potential refinement or expansion. By meticulously assessing key factors such as revenue streams, cost structure, and value proposition alignment, LRP helps ascertain both current-state robustness and future-state adaptability. Tools like SWOT analysis, alongside scenario simulations, extend critical insights that facilitate strategic adjustments.

Evaluating and Mitigating Risks

Risk evaluation and mitigation represent indispensable components of a far-reaching LRP. This calls for organizations to hypothesize potential adversities and configure their strategies to buffer potential repercussions. For instance, a global logistics company may examine geopolitical tensions that could impede international shipping lanes.

Undertaking such an appraisal allows for the formulation of countermeasures, such as establishing alternative routes or diversifying vendor bases, thereby sustaining operational continuity amid disruptions. By incorporating risk assessment into their long-term financial planning, businesses not only steel themselves against future uncertainties but also hone their predictive abilities to anticipate industry volatilities, regulatory shifts, and systemic threats before they crystallize into concrete challenges.

Long-Range Planning in Specific Contexts

Lrp considerations in manufacturing.

Manufacturing entities find particular benefit from LRP as it underpins production cycles, demand forecasting, and strategic investments. In this dynamic sector, the longevity of planning assumes pronounced significance given the capital-intensive nature of the industry. Through detailed LRP, manufacturers can align capital outlay with anticipated market expansions, such as a biotech firm earmarking funds for next-generation gene therapies.

This thorough planning enables resource allocation that reflects anticipated growth and emergent sector trends, reinforcing a firm’s position amid competitive landscapes. Capacities such as o9’s IBP software cater to these strategic imperatives by providing integrated planning systems that synthesize disparate data for an end-to-end perspective, thereby amplifying both financial foresight and operational scalability.

Navigating Supply Chain with Long-Term Goals

In the intricate domain of supply chain management, LRP facilitates the benchmarking of efficiencies and strategic planning of logistic frameworks. Effective LRP capacitates companies to preempt resource shortages, map out logistics for new product introductions, or reconfigure distribution channels due to shifting consumer purchasing patterns.

For instance, a multinational pharmaceutical company might plan for patent expirations and the subsequent generic drug competition by enhancing their supply chain flexibility. Strategic supply chain LRP integrates principles from the broader planning process, leveraging tools such as detailed demand forecasting and robust risk management to not only sustain current operations but also prepare for and profit from future market developments.

Addressing FAQs about Long-Range Planning

Long-range vs. short-term planning: key differences.

Long-Range Planning contrasts with short-term planning in scope and scale. LRP centers on envisioning the future and aligning financial tactics with long-term strategic objectives. It delves into strategic alignment, extending beyond immediate operational concerns to encompass expansive timeframes and profound organizational impacts. Conversely, short-term planning addresses imminent financial needs and adapts swiftly to market fluctuations and operational exigencies.

For example, a telecommunications operator might employ LRP to pivot services towards nascent technologies like 5G, while concurrently utilizing short-term planning to address quarterly earnings targets. Both approaches are valuable, with LRP providing a strategic scaffold for enduring growth, and short-term planning offering the flexibility to react adeptly to changing circumstances.

Tackling Challenges in Long-Term Planning

Navigating the complexities of LRP entails playing a long game against uncertainty and change. The challenge lies in crafting plans that are both resilient to immediate disruptions and agile enough to seize evolving opportunities. A broad spectrum of industries, from manufacturing to finance, rely on LRP to forecast market movements, technological evolutions, and consumer tendencies, while tempering ambitious growth plans with realistic risk projections.

LRP symbiotically interacts with other financial tools in a company’s arsenal, ensuring synchrony and supporting organizational visions. It deploys projections not as fixed trajectories but as guides that inform and flex with a business’s journey, acknowledging the mutable nature of markets. Tools like o9’s IBP software enhance LRP by delivering scalable, insightful planning functions that marry detailed financial data to strategic organizational aims.

benefits of long term planning in business

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Setting Sights on the Horizon: What Are the Objectives of Long-Term Planning?

Choosing the right “tactical planning approach” for your business goals.

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Benefits of long-term planning

Benefit of long-term planning

Long term planning provides you with a pin in the map, a future point. Providing you with something to focus on and work towards.

I highly recommend long term planning and while looking ten years into the future might be scary it creates an opportunity to dream BIG. Too often I see, particularly women, holding onto their dreams, keeping them hidden away from the world. Sometimes through fear of failure, not feeling worthy or even fear of this amazing dream being realised. Worrying about how to achieve the vision and ignoring the pull that is felt towards something bigger.

Dreams are for living and not holding

Holding onto your dream is doing YOU an injustice and your potential clients a disservice. What would it mean to your family and loved ones? Think about your clients, what would your BIG dream mean to them? What does it mean to you?

If we’ve learnt anything from the past twelve months and COVID19 it’s that life is for living. That it’s for spending with our loved ones and doing more of what we love. Take a moment now, where would you like to be in ten years? What do you WANT your business to look and feel like? Do you want to earn more and do less, be speaking on worldwide stages – what is your long term dream vision.

Three reasons you need a long-term plan

  • A long term vision is absolutely your opportunity to dream as BIG and as CRAZY as you wish. Remember these are long term plans so anything is possible and are the pin in the map to show you where the destination is.
  • Knowing where you’re going will prevent you from wasting time and going off on tangents.  If you don’t have a destination in sight, progress will be much slower as you are more likely to give your time to activity that doesn’t necessarily serve you or the business.
  • With a strong vision, you’ll start making different decisions about HOW you work and the tools you use. Meaning you’ll bring your dream closer and sooner than you first thought possible.

Always close the loop on your dreams  and check-in with what they mean to you. Perhaps you want to travel more (or, as in my case, hire someone to plan your holidays from the moment the taxi picks you up from your house to take you to the airport), buy your dream car or home, or simply spend more time on a hobby that brings you joy? Visualise how you will feel when that becomes YOUR reality.

Remember to review your long term plans regularly.  I recommend doing this on a yearly basis as you may want to tweak as you progress on your journey. Each time you do this you may even dream BIGGER, which is what happens to me.

Difference between long and short term plans

Quite simply, long term is the dream or vision and end destination, while short term planning focuses on how. It is your commitment to the actions you need to take to make the long term happen. Way easier when you have a long term vision, a destination to head towards.

Short term plans can be flexible as you learn new ways to move closer to your dream and make it your reality. Changing as you and your business grow and as you explore the possibilities for making your long term vision or dream your reality.

It is YOU getting it done, building momentum from the actions you’re making and moving towards the vision. Or as I like to say ‘pulling your vision closer, sooner’.  By keeping your end destination in mind and holding this vision you’ll focus on the right activity and enjoy faster decision making. While possessing and gaining confidence in taking the necessary action.

Are you ignoring your dreams?

Do you have dreams that are bubbling below the surface and not sure how to release them?  Want a sounding board and an opportunity to say your dreams out loud in order to take those first steps? If the answer is yes then I warmly invite you to book a Business Freedom Coaching call. My gift to you and with no obligation to work with me, you can access my diary here .

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benefits of long term planning in business

Long-Term Career Goals [Examples & How to Succeed]

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November 7, 2023

Setting goals is the first step to achieving anything you want out of life, and your career is no exception. Long-term career goals define where you want to be in the future and serve as an overall guide for the decisions you make about your career day-by-day and year-by-year.

This article will explore what long-term career goals are and offer examples and tips for realizing them.

What Are Long-Term Career Goals?

Definition : Long-term career goals are objectives that will be fulfilled over time, anywhere from a few years to a lifetime.

These goals are the big building blocks for your career as a whole, creating the concrete steps you need to take to reach your overarching aspirations. Long-term career goals help keep you on track on the long road to creating the work life you want to have and steer you toward the steps that will get you where you want to go.

However, long-term career goals do not need to be set in stone. They can and should evolve over time as you progress in your career. Many things will change along the course of a career—including yourself—and your long-term career goals should grow with you.

Long-Term Career Goal Examples

Long-term career goals depend entirely on each person’s interests and desires, so they are limited only by individual imagination. However, there are several goals that are very common for people to set. These can include targets such as:

  • Landing a leadership position
  • Working within a specific company or industry
  • Finding a healthy work-life balance
  • Increasing earnings
  • Working in a specific type of environment, such as a fast-paced workplace or entirely remotely
  • Landing a promotion or specific job title
  • Earning a degree or certification
  • Creating career stability
  • Becoming a mentor or coach
  • Publishing research, articles or a book
  • Becoming a subject matter expert/thought leader
  • Starting a business
  • Retiring early/comfortably
  • Building a robust professional network

Importance of Long-Term Career Goals

Long-term career goals create a framework that you can use to guide you throughout your career. The process of setting long-term career goals can help you articulate what you want out of your career and narrow your options so that they can focus on what’s most important to you.

Once those goals are established, they function as guideposts to influence you to make the choices that will get you closer to your desired career destination. Goals also motivate you to keep going through the work it requires to reach the next step. Finally, achieving these goals brings immense satisfaction and fulfillment.

How Do Short Term Goals Differ from Long Term Goals?

The difference between short- and long-term career goals is just as it sounds: long-term goals take more time to achieve. However, they are both key to accomplishing your objectives. In order to achieve long-term goals, you must create short-term goals that will help you reach bigger goals step by step. And short-term goals should always map to long-term goals so that you are spending your time and energy in ways that lead to your bigger vision.

Some examples of short-term goals include:

  • Taking a class or seminar
  • Learning a new tool or skill
  • Finding a mentor
  • Successfully executing a project

Setting Your Long-Term Career Goals

Setting your long-term career goals generally requires self-reflection and research. When you ask yourself the question of “What do I want to achieve in my career?” the answer may not immediately be clear, and it may take some investigation for you to come up with meaningful goals for yourself.

Here are some tips to help you through the process:

  • Start with a big vision of what you want out of life, and work backwards from there to set career goals
  • Be aware of your personal “why” for your goals
  • Learn from others’ career paths

Talking about your career goals with others can be a huge help. Family and friends can offer personal insights, while colleagues and your manager can provide a more professional view. Having a career mentor can be an invaluable resource as well—they are there to help guide you by getting to know you and drawing on their experience and expertise to offer personal guidance.

Assessing Personal Values and Interests

Your long-term goals should reflect your personal values and interests, so it pays to spend some time defining what you believe in and what kinds of things you are drawn to. This applies not only to activities and subjects, but also how you like to work and relate with people and the world around you.

Here are some questions you can ask when you are exploring possible long-term goals to see if they are a good fit for you:

  • Do your long-term goals make you feel energized? Overwhelmed? Anxious?
  • How much would you have to change yourself in order to achieve the goal?
  • Have you made the goal based on your personal vision, or on others’ expectations?

When you have set thoughtful, personal long-term goals, they should feel exciting and achievable, while giving you plenty of room to stretch and grow.

SMART Goals

Any kind of goal is more achievable when you make it SMART:

  • Specific: Define in detail what you want to achieve.
  • Measurable: Make sure you have a way to determine whether you’ve reached your goal or not.
  • Achievable: The goal must be realistic.
  • Relevant: Create goals that bring you closer to your ultimate objective.
  • Time-bound: Your goal should have a definitive time frame.

Using the SMART framework is a standard best practice that sets you up for success in setting and reaching your long-term career goals.

Strategies for Achieving Long-Term Career Goals

While your long-term career goals should be realistic, that doesn’t mean they will necessarily be easy to accomplish. Realizing meaningful long-term career goals takes planning, motivation, and accountability. Setting clear, measurable goals is a great start toward reaching your objectives. But you also need a plan to help you keep moving toward your targets. Here are a few strategies and steps you can use to get there.

Create a Career Roadmap

A career roadmap charts your career plan, outlining how you will get from where you are now to your ultimate target. An effective career roadmap includes the actions you will need to take at each step of your career to reach your objectives. This kind of roadmap offers concrete guideposts for you as you move forward in your professional life. Some benefits of using a career roadmap include:

  • Offers guidance in making decisions that affect your career trajectory
  • Allows you to measure your real progress against your plan
  • Provides motivation to continue striving toward your desired long-term results

However, career roadmaps should also be flexible enough to allow you to change them as needed. As circumstances and goals change, career roadmaps will need to shift as well. Very few people will end up with the exact same roadmap in their later career that they had at the beginning. Align your career roadmap with any career pathing conversations you have with your managers or mentors to make sure your desires are known for your career.

Gain Necessary Skills and Experiences

All long-term career goals involve cultivating new skills and experiences that can only be gained over time. For example, if your long-term goal is to land in a leadership position, you will need to develop several skills, such as “soft” interpersonal skills, communication skills, and management skills. This could translate to actions such as participating in courses or training, seeking out leadership roles inside or outside of the work setting, or participating in a leadership coaching program to learn from experienced leaders .

Networking and Building Professional Relationships

You can’t get where you want to go in your career without the right skills, but relationships with the right people are also key to achieving your long-term career goals. At every stage of your career, a healthy and diverse professional network provides an invaluable resource for career opportunities, learning, support, and collaboration. However, valued professional relationships aren’t one-way. A great network comes with opportunities to help others. This can involve formal situations such as workplace mentoring programs or more informal relationships.

Continuous Learning and Development

Having a mindset in which continuous learning and development is an everyday part of life and work will go a long way toward helping you achieve long-term work goals. This means taking advantage of chances to learn and grow your skills. Often, employers offer these types of opportunities in formal employee development programs , but you can also find myriad ways to learn on your own.

Top Challenges to Reaching Long-Term Career Goals

Everyone faces obstacles on the road to realizing their long-term career goals. These may include:

Changes in the workplace

The pace of change in industries and markets has accelerated over the past several decades, and technology is going to continue to create evolution. That’s why adaptability is so important in setting your long-term career goals; you have to know how to roll with the punches.

Changes in your life

Even with the most detailed plan, life will present unexpected changes, both positive and negative. When these happen, it’s time to take stock of where you are, how new developments have affected your plans, and where to go from here.

Self-doubt or uncertainty

Setbacks or a lack of expected progress can sow the seeds of self-doubt about whether you can really accomplish what you’ve set out to do. When this happens, some serious self-examination is in order, and it’s always a good idea to talk to a trusted mentor or other person to get an objective view.

We all have a limited amount of time, and taking enough of it to accomplish your goals can be a real challenge. It’s easy to let day-to-day tasks monopolize your time. But if you want to reach your long-term goals, you need to consciously make sure you’re spending the time to make them a reality.

Tips for Staying Motivated and Overcoming Challenges

It can be difficult to stay motivated over the amount of time it takes to achieve long-term career goals.

Here are some suggestions for how to stay motivated:

  • Set SMART goals from the beginning
  • Have a career roadmap
  • Breaking up your long-term goals into smaller steps
  • Seeking guidance and support from others
  • Talk with your mentors about your goals
  • Celebrate when you’ve reached your goals and milestones

You deserve to enjoy the sense of accomplishment that comes from realizing what you’ve set out to do. A moment of reflection on what you’ve achieved also offers an opportunity to make sure your goals are still relevant, and to recalibrate if they aren’t.

Reach Your Long-Term Career Goals with Chronus

Setting long-term career goals is crucial to creating a career that is satisfying and successful—no matter how you define success. Creating these goals isn’t a simple process, but doing it right lays the groundwork for getting where you want to go in your professional life. No matter where you are in your career, you can benefit from long-term career goals. The time to begin is now.

Learn more about how mentoring programs can help you design and achieve your long- and short-term career goals.

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Jennifer Sokolowsky

Jennifer Sokolowsky is a freelance writer and editor based in Seattle. Her work focuses on the potential of technology to transform the business world and human lives.

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The No. 1 money mistake to avoid if you're laid off: The 'long-term consequences' will be 'very painful’

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Getting laid off from your job can be a difficult experience, and figuring out how to supplement your income can add to that stress.

But the No. 1 mistake to avoid money-wise in the aftermath of a layoff is cashing out your 401(k) plan, says says Anne Lester, a retirement expert and author of " Your Best Financial Life: Save Smart Now for the Future You Want ," which will be released in March.

"The long-term consequences of that are going to be very painful," she tells CNBC Make It.

If you're considering cashing out your 401(k) to cover your expenses after a layoff, there are a few major reasons why financial experts say it should be your last resort. Here's what to know.  

An early withdrawal from your 401(k) may result in a hefty tax bill

One of the main reasons financial experts advise against withdrawing money from your 401(k) after you've been laid off is the potential tax consequences. You'll generally need to pay income tax on any money you withdraw, which could result in a higher tax bill.

Say you withdraw $100,000 from your 401(k) after being laid off. At tax time, that money will be combined with your previous annual income and may result in you being bumped into a higher tax bracket, Lester says.

On top of potentially owing local, state and federal taxes, you may also owe an additional 10% tax penalty for withdrawing your retirement funds before reaching age 59½, per the IRS . In certain circumstances, it's possible to make a penalty-free hardship withdrawal , but specific conditions must be met.

And since taxes and penalties can be pretty costly, you may end up with less money than you initially expected, Lester says.

"You may look at the number in your 401(k) and think 'Oh my gosh, I have $100,000,' but you don't actually have $100,000," she says. "Depending on your tax bracket, you may only get half of that."

You may derail your long-term retirement goals

In addition to potentially facing a costly tax bill, cashing out your 401(k) may negatively impact your ability to meet your long-term retirement goals.

When you withdraw funds invested through your 401(k), that money loses out on the opportunity to continue growing through the power of compound interest . While you can invest more money later on, you can't get that time back.

"The greatest money-making asset anyone can possess is time," Ed Slott, publisher of IRAHelp.com, previously told CNBC Make It .

On top of that, cashing out your 401(k) means you're essentially restarting your retirement saving journey. It may be difficult to build your funds back up to the level they were at previously.

What to do instead

Rather than tapping into your retirement savings, there are a couple of other options you can consider if you've experienced a layoff and need cash to cover day-to-day expenses.

Try a 0% interest credit card

While relying on credit cards shouldn't be your first option either, if you don't have emergency savings or another source of income readily available, you may want to temporarily use them to cover your living expenses, Lester says.

"If credit cards are the only way you're going to be able to eat and you've cut out every single other expense then yes, put some stuff on a credit card," she says. "But it's not a strategy, it's a desperation move."

That's because credit card debt can quickly balloon to an unmanageable amount due to high interest rates.

If you must rely on credit cards to cover your living expenses after being laid off, a card that offers a 0% interest period can help you avoid costly interest charges for sometimes up to 21 months.

But it's important to note that not everyone qualifies for this type of credit card since you typically need a good to excellent credit score. Additionally, opening a new card may temporarily lower your credit score.

Apply for unemployment benefits

Another option is to see if you qualify for unemployment benefits in your state, Lester says.

Although each state uses a different set of rules to decide who qualifies for unemployment benefits, you'll typically qualify if you were let go from your job due to no fault of your own, according to the U.S. Department of Labor .

You'll need to file your claim with the state where you were employed and provide information such as your address and dates of your employment. It's generally better to apply sooner rather than later since it can take a few weeks for you to receive a check.

"You want to file for that as soon as possible," Lester says. "This is not the time to feel like 'Oh, I can't do that. That's embarrassing.' There's no shame in getting laid off or getting unemployment benefits."

It's also important to note that the amount you receive will generally be based on a percentage of your earnings over the past 52-week period and capped at a state's maximum amount, per the Labor Department. Additionally, you can receive unemployment benefits for a maximum of 26 weeks in most states.

For more information on eligibility guidelines, check out the Department of Labor's unemployment insurance fact sheet and map of unemployment insurance offices .

Want to land your dream job in 2024?  Take  CNBC's new online course How to Ace Your Job Interview  to learn what hiring managers are really looking for, body language techniques, what to say and not to say, and the best way to talk about pay.

Preparing for job interview success: A CNBC Make It course

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The Long-Term Costs of Wind Turbines

  • Sam Aflaki,
  • Atalay Atasu,
  • Luk N. Van Wassenhove

benefits of long term planning in business

To avoid environmental degradation, wind farm operators need to factor realistic maintenance and decommissioning costs into their projections.

Wind energy is experiencing a boom, but in a pattern eerily reminiscent of the nineteenth century Pennsylvania oil boom, wind farms are building ever larger turbines to farm wind energy further and further from shore. This trend carries risks, especially as turbines come with largely hidden costs. Increasing evidence suggests that although larger turbines can capture more energy, at a certain point the costs of maintaining and decommissioning large turbines located far offshore will outweigh the benefits of that energy capture. If wind farm operators are to avoid creating an environmental and economic disaster in the longer term, they need to begin factoring realistic maintenance and decommissioning costs into their projections.

In 1859, the town of Titusville in Pennsylvania vaulted into the limelight when Edwin Drake struck oil, thereby marking the inception of America’s oil industry. With an initial depth of 69.5 feet (roughly equivalent to the blade size of a 0.5 MW wind turbine), Drake’s well set the stage for an unprecedented era of economic prosperity.

  • SA Sam Aflaki is a professor of operations management at HEC Paris and holds the CMA CGM chair on sustainability and supply chain analytics.
  • AA Atalay Atasu is a professor of technology and operations management and the Bianca and James Pitt Chair in Environmental Sustainability at INSEAD.
  • LW Luk N. Van Wassenhove is the Henry Ford Chaired Professor of Manufacturing, Emeritus, at INSEAD and leads its Humanitarian Research Group and its Sustainable Operations Initiative.

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  25. Long-Term Career Goals [Examples & How to Succeed]

    Long-Term Career Goal Examples. Long-term career goals depend entirely on each person's interests and desires, so they are limited only by individual imagination. However, there are several goals that are very common for people to set. These can include targets such as: Landing a leadership position. Working within a specific company or ...

  26. No. 1 money mistake to avoid after being laid off

    The No. 1 money mistake to avoid if you're laid off: The 'long-term consequences' will be 'very painful'. Getting laid off from your job can be a difficult experience, and figuring out ...

  27. Resources

    Connect with us. Sitarski Wealth Management. 350 S Main StreetSuite 100Ann Arbor, MI 48104-5603. O 734.930.0555. TF 800.338.7846. F 866.522.9575. Map & Directions. Map & Directions. Raymond James financial advisors may only conduct business with residents of the states and/or jurisdictions for which they are properly registered.

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    The Long-Term Costs of Wind Turbines. Summary. Wind energy is experiencing a boom, but in a pattern eerily reminiscent of the nineteenth century Pennsylvania oil boom, wind farms are building ever ...