Future Vision: Strategic planning is advisable no matter company’s size, leaders say

As companies approach the end of the year, most are finalizing their budgets for 2024. But several business leaders say looking only at the horizon of the next 12 months is shortsighted, suggesting strategic planning for years into the future should be on every company’s radar.

Environmental Works Inc. CEO Jamie Sivils says his company considers both short- and long-term goals for strategic planning. Some of the goals for the Springfield-based environmental consulting and contracting firm have involved expanding its footprint, which now covers 11 markets, and boosting its workforce.

“I can remember when having 200 employees was a goal. Now, we’re at 350,” he says. “I can look back five, 10 years ago and think of the goals we set back then, I’d say for the most part, we’ve been hitting them.”

At JMark Business Solutions Inc., leaders regularly write four-year plans, says CEO Thomas Douglas.

“We take that four-year plan and divide it into one-year goals. Then we take the one-year goals and divide them down into quarters, and we focus on priorities for that quarter to get us closer to where we want to be,” he says, noting JMark traditionally focuses on areas such as culture, finances and operations. “Because we’re in the technology industry, we always have a security goal. That’s both our internal security and security we manage for our clients. We’ll have a client-facing goal that may be around improving customer service or improving their ability to plan.”

Douglas says one of the company’s current operational goals is replacing its phone system. Larger-scale goals must be balanced among day-to-day work for the business – an area in which he says a lot of companies struggle.

“When you lay all these priorities out, it’s how much time and energy do we want to devote to moving the ball forward in terms of company priorities, initiatives and improving things,” he says, noting JMark also always has a growth goal for new business acquisitions. “Then, how much is day-to-day operational? Getting a good gauge on that gives our team permission to prioritize appropriately so we can continue to move the business forward.”

Both workforce and acquisition goals line up among answers given by respondents of Springfield Business Journal’s 2023 Economic Growth Survey about strategies for future growth. Among strategies selected, 33% of respondents identified growing the workforce, while 23% chose mergers and acquisitions. Only 6% of respondents said they weren’t planning for growth. 

In succession
While it’s been over a decade since the death of Environmental Works Inc.’s founder Robin Melton, Sivils says the succession plan she created named him successor to her role of CEO and created a seven-person board of directors, which included a mix of company employees, outside business leaders she trusted and her sister, Erin Palicki.

“That helped us get through that very tumultuous time after she passed,” he says. “For succession planning now, what’s different is instead of one single owner, there’s three of us, including myself, Jason Smith, who is in Springfield, and Paul Dial, who is in Kansas City.”

As the oldest of the group at 58, Sivils says there’s youth in the ownership as both Smith and Dial are in their 40s.

“From a leadership perspective, we’ve got a couple dozen people that we consider top leadership in our company,” he says. “We spend a lot of time trying to develop them to lead different offices or different groups within the business.”

In SBJ’s Economic Growth Survey, 32% of respondents said they will likely find or train a replacement when they exit their companies, while 15% expect to make an external sale of the business, 8% plan to sell to their management team and 6% expect to sell to a family member.

JMark, which Douglas says employs 120, hasn’t established a succession plan yet.

“It’s not something that we have made a major priority, but we’re putting time and energy into what that looks like,” he says. “While we may not have a fully defined succession plan in the business, if I get hit by a bus or certain senior people within the organization get hit by a bus, we know there’s cash in the bank that we’ve been saving for over 10 years. We know there is a certain inherent value in the business.”

Founded in 2010, digital marketing firm Mostly Serious LLC also is yet to engage in any succession planning, says President Spencer Harris. That’s not to say the 16-employee company doesn’t have its eye on the future, as Harris notes there’s always conversations about long-term goals.

“In the strategy that we’ve developed for the next three to five years at Mostly Serious, we have built an infrastructure that is capable of scaling about double our current size,” he says. “We do continue to talk about space and what do you do with 30 team members instead of 16.”

The firm doesn’t even need office space for 16 right now, as Harris says four of its employees work outside the Springfield area, including Kansas City and near Chicago.

“Part of the equation since COVID is how do we scale in a remote world,” he says. “So, we have a comprehensive work-from-anywhere policy. Those who want to work in the office can do so, and those who want to work anywhere else, we also want to give them all the resources and support they need to be successful there.”

Offering aid
Along with Mostly Serious CEO Jarad Johnson, Harris co-owns Habitat Communication and Culture LLC, the marketing firm’s consulting and leadership development arm. Harris says strategic planning is one of Habitat’s four core service areas, along with leadership and management development, research and performance management.

For strategic planning, the company builds a plan with its clients through a one- or two-day session that works through a strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats exercise, as well as assesses the business vision and gets clarity on the direction leadership seeks to go. Harris says they build a scorecard to evaluate progress monthly and quarterly against measurable and trackable goals.

“Typically, when we’re involved with our clients in that capacity, we’re meeting with them at least monthly. That can be more if that’s an outcome of the strategic planning meetings,” he says, adding Habitat has completed around five strategic plans in the past six weeks.

The organization works with companies of all sizes, Harris says, noting OMB Bank, Bryan Properties LLC and the city of Ozark are past clients.

“One of the nice things about strategic planning is that it sets an anchor point in the distance,” he says. “Now, when those new things come up and opportunities arise, you can say, ‘Is this more important than that thing we set in the distance? If not, how do we interact with it appropriately and modify that thing we set in the distance?’ It creates real clarity of vision, and it creates some focus.”

Douglas says it’s important for company owners to start thinking in terms of timelines for strategic planning – for any set period desired. But he also emphasizes buy-in from the senior leadership team to make sure they have the same goals.

“Everything is a team sport when it comes to business,” he says. “If you don’t find that in the senior leadership team, then it’s going to be really, really challenging to achieve anything.”

Sivils agrees, adding rowing in the same direction is vital no matter the size of a business.

“Even a small business of four or five people, unless you’re with them all the time, there’s going to be times where they’re making their own decisions,” he says. “You want them to have some goal posts to know which direction to go in.”