Planning for Changes to Your Business

A business plan sets your course for the future. It dictates what you need to do and how you plan to do it. A business plan only works if you and your employees follow it. But here’s the catch. Changes can come along in any industry that rewrites the rules of the game. Companies that cling to the details of their plan when everything around them is changing can find themselves sidelined very fast.

Knowing when to stick to your mission, strategy, goals and plans — and knowing when it’s time to make some quick or even sweeping changes — isn’t easy. In many ways, it’s the skill that determines the real leaders in business.

The first step in successfully managing change is knowing the right questions to ask. The more time you spend researching the forces that drive change in your business, the better you’ll become at predicting those changes in advance.

Just as important: The more time you spend improving your company’s readiness for change, the more swiftly you will be able to respond when it happens. As new technologies, globalization, and economic dislocations transform the marketplace, the ability to respond to change has become one of the key capabilities for success.

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Source:http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/planning-for-changes-to-your-business.html