Destination Planning

A destination statement is a planned indication of where an organisation wishes to be in a specific time horizon. The Destination Statement is a backward looking description of the organisation, as if the strategy had been successfully implemented, and therefore tends to include bullish, positive descriptive statements about what the organisation wants, based on things that are in its control. Typical SME owners would perhaps want to be debt free, or to reach a specific revenue target etc. A typical example of a destination statement for a larger organisation would be:

By 2012 we will:

• Reduce our debt/equity  gearing ratio to ‘x’ % ;
• Reach revenue targets of ‘y’ million dollars
• Own six major brands at any given time
• Have a single manufacturing plant
• Own distribution outlets in 10 cities
• Become the employer of choice in New Zealand or Australia
• etc.
• etc.

The destination statement is a statement of intention only and gives no indication of how one needs to achieve one destination. Reaching the destination requires a combination of planning, implementation and performance management.

Key benefits of destination based planning are:

1. They permit owners to make their strategic intentions visible making it easier for managers and staff to take ownership of the firms strategy;
2. They permit organisations to build brand awareness and loyalty as all stakeholders are made aware of the company’s intentions;
3. Unlike vision or mission statements they are anchored to a date, and therefore make planning and performance management easier
4. They allow for the efficient design of reward strategies for staff and succession planning for owners
5. They allow the third generation balanced score cards to link each layer of staff or management and manage performance, by linking the destinations, using aoppropriate metrics that measure performance at each level.