Over the past several weeks, I’ve had some really interesting conversations with a number of business friends and acquaintances about how 2020 is shaping up, and how they’re thinking about 2021. Their assessments have run the gamut; but there have been two common themes most have observed:

1)   2020’s results were far from what they had envisioned at the beginning of the year (some better and some worse)

2)   There were a lot of initiatives that were put on hold as a result of the COVID crisis, and that has created additional uncertainty going into next year.

I don’t know about you, but when I hear “a lot of initiatives were put on hold” I immediately hear “reductions in expenses and capital investment.” Which might mean that companies have been increasing their cash positions (assuming their businesses weren’t clobbered by COVID). And this might also mean there could be a significant increase in business expenditures and investments in the coming quarters and years.

To see if this might be the case, I started digging around in the balance sheets of some larger US companies on Yahoo! Finance to find out if Cash On Hand was in fact increasing. Let me just say that turned out to be a pretty enlightening inquiry.

Take a look at the following table of some selected larger (more well-known) Fortune 100 firms.

Pretty incredible! These 48 firms experienced a total cash (and cash equivalent) increase between Q2 2019 and Q2 2020 of more than $188B (+44%)! And, these firms are now sitting on more than $600B in cash – WOW!

With an increase of this magnitude, I naturally began to think about the various choices/decisions these (and other firms in similar cash accumulation situations) might to be able to make this year during their annual planning sessions. But, with the uncertainty of COVID still hanging over us, what will strategic planning look like this year?

I floated a quick poll on LinkedIn the middle of last week with the following statement:

Strategic Planning Will Be Unlike Any Other Year

·     Agree – 76%

·     Disagree – 24%

Even though I didn’t receive a ton of responses, my highly unscientific results did tend to line up with what I had been hearing from others – that is, we’re still in uncharted waters and 2021 planning is going to be pretty different for many of us.

So as we enter the 2021 strategic planning season, here are 23 questions for you to think about to as you begin to set next year’s business strategies and plans.

Introspective Questions

1. Is our business different now – how / why?
2. Is our core customer different now – how / why?
3. Is our core offering as relevant to our core customers as it used to be?
4. What did we end up doing this year (that worked or didn’t) that we hadn’t planned on doing?
5. What new things that we initiated are working?
6. Do these newly initiated things need to be improved / refined – if so, how?
7. What did we originally plan to do this year that we chose not to do?
8. Did this put us at a disadvantage – how / why?
9. Which of these sidelined initiatives need to be back on the list for next year?
10. Will we now need to execute these initiatives this differently as a result of delaying or other circumstances?
11. What are things we had previously envisioned we would do next year that we will (or won’t) likely do?
12. Are we in a better (or worse) negotiating position now?
13. Are there things we’d previously put in the Strategic Planning “parking lot” that we need to dust off and reconsider?
14. What will we do next year if the COVID-19 crisis gets worse (or better)?
15. What macro trends (broader economy, capital markets, labor markets, regulatory, etc.) are working in our favor (or against us)?

Competitive Set Questions

1. Has our competitive set changed – how / why?
2. Are there new potential competitors as a result of the COVID crisis?
3. Which single competitor had the most success this year – how / why?
4. What did our key competitors do differently (from what we did) this year?
5. What are we hearing about what our competitors might be planning to do next year?
6. Has our market position changed as a result of competitive actions – how / why?
7. Which of our current (or potential) competitors are most likely to merge or acquire one another?
8. If you were to join a competitor’s firm tomorrow, what things would you do to attack your current firm?

We are clearly living (and working) in unusual times; and this calls for us to approach many things very differently – strategic planning is no exception.

Given the current business / economic environment, I would encourage you to begin working through these (as well as your traditional) strategic planning questions sooner rather than later so you are able to envision as many options as possible; and pare your list back to those with the greatest likelihood to deliver the most value for your customers, and further separate your organization from your competition.

So what do you think? Is this a useful list of strategic planning questions?

Do you have some unique questions of your own? Please share them in the comments section!