Are Your Plans Clear for 2023?

I’ve shared with you in the past that I like a one-page plan that breaks its elements into the following timeframes:

                                         Vision / 3 years.                                Goals / 12 months

                                          Projects / 3 months.                               Actions / this week

I find that this is a terrific format for getting your current action plans focused while keeping an eye on the big picture and the space in between. This can be a document that drives the implementation of your more formalised strategic plan.

Right now, I’d like to give you the overall framework for what the elements of your plan should be and over the coming weeks help you fill in the blanks with guidance on how to build up your plan in more detail.

This brings me to the basic planning process:  NOW / WHERE / HOW

If we first look at where we want the business to be, we need to focus and fine-tune our long-term plans. This will require us to address:    

1. Vision.         2. Mission.         3. Values.         4. Objectives.
 
Our next step is to take an honest assessment of where the business is at the present time and identify what we are facing and have to address in order for us to successfully move forward. At this stage, a quick prioritisation can be done to highlight the issues with the biggest impact on the business and that need to be solved in the immediate future.

The final step in your planning session is identifying your strategies for moving forward and then the specific actions and priorities that need to be taken.

All sounds pretty easy, doesn’t it? Well, then why is it so hard in practice or why it doesn’t it get routinely done and documented? To make your task a little easier I’ll take these components one by one over the coming weeks and expand upon them to make your job easier. How does that sound?

For the remainder of this post let’s just start with Vision. Our vision for the business should be the big goal that inspires us to be in business. It should be concise and be something that describes the organisation’s ideal future. It should be inspiring but at the same time measurable and achievable. I like to refer to it as the ultimate destination of the business.

To help with developing your vision, and your business statement, a good start is to consider the answers to these questions:

  1. How good do you want the organisation to be?
  2. What are you providing in terms of specific products and services?
  3. Which customers or which markets do you serve?
  4. What is the geographic scope of your business?

Once you can answer these questions you can refine your vision statement to be something that you find inspiring and highly motivational. Above all, make it measurable so that you know how you are going in terms of reaching your destination.

Next time I’ll take you through the 3 remaining “where” elements of the plan, being mission, values and goals.

Have a crack at revisiting the vision for your business with these few tips in mind. However if it all does become too overwhelming, you know exactly where to find me and I am certain to be able to clarify and document your thoughts. until next time, happy planning!

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Richard Coumans

Richard Coumans is an experienced business coach specialising in growing and drastically improving the profitability of entrepreneurial privately owned businesses. My skill set gives me a unique understanding of how the numbers link to the business strategy and the practical experience to develop and implement a strategy to maximise those numbers.

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