Moving Words – Strategic Planning
Timothy Brady
“An hour of planning can save you 10 hours of doing.” – Dale Carnegie
Even though you’re not a Fortune 500 or even a Fortune 100,000 company (yet), planning your moves and anticipating what’s coming in 2025 is just as important for any size business; a sole proprietor, partnership, LLC, Sub Chapter S, C Corp as it is for a large, multinational corporation whose stock trades on Dow Jones. In fact, it’s even more important for the micro- and small trucking company, because there’s little room for error when compared to a large carrier. So it’s time to see what changes are on the horizon for 2025 and to develop strategies necessary to handle them.
Here are 11 questions to prompt you to think strategically about 2025 and beyond. Answer each one on your own and have every management person in your moving operation do the same. Everyone should write down his/her thoughts and observations, along with ideas on how to handle each question:
- What is the one thing at which your moving company was poorest this year? What needs to happen for improvement next year?
- What is the one thing your company did best last year? What do you need to do to repeat that success?
- What or who was most responsible for holding back your company from moving forward last year? What needs to be done so it doesn’t continue into 2025?
- Which area or function of your operation was most responsible for standing in the way of your organization’s success in 2024? What needs to be done so it doesn’t continue into 2025?
- Which individual(s) were most responsible for your organization’s success last year? How do you make certain it continues in 2025?
- Which area or function was most responsible for your organization’s success last year? How do you make certain this continues in 2025?
- What were the worst mistakes you personally made in 2024? How will you ensure you don’t repeat them in 2025?
- What were the highest accomplishments you personally made last year? How will you ensure you repeat similar ones in 2025?
- If you fired yourself today, and came back tomorrow as the new boss with a clean sheet, what would you do differently?
- If a ‘perfect’ moving company opened tomorrow serving the same shipper base as you do, what would they be like?
- What is the one service other moving companies aren’t providing shippers which, if you did, would make your company their household moving heroes?
Once each management member has completed the list of answers and recommendations, sit down with your team and begin strategic planning for 2025. Some of the answers and recommendations are going to be tough. But it’s your self-evaluation, that of each manager, and the collaborative evaluation of the entire company which will aid you mapping the best direction for your company to move. And that will be toward greater success in 2025.
“Great things are not done by impulse, but by a series of small things brought together.” – Vincent van Gogh
