When to stop doing something for strategic planning

After making the decision to grow a beard, I was taken aback by the large variety of beard care products targeted towards men. It took a while to weed through customer reviews and try out a few before I found a product brand that worked best for me.

After a few months of using this particular brand, I received a series of emails from the company from which I purchased it. To paraphrase, they were retooling their production line to focus more on just a couple of lines of beard balms in order to improve profits and better serve their customers.

Rather than adding products, they were cutting them.

This took a lot of guts. All too often when it comes to strategic planning, banks and credit unions get bogged down in adding new stuff. The real trick to strategic planning is not in adding new things to your agenda, but in finding things that no longer make sense and having the courage to cross those off your list.

 

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