Today’s blog is a short recap of my last article on the structure of the Planning Session and what a day of planning might look like when you do it with me. Specifically, I want to look at identifying the key issues that are impacting your business operations before we rank those issues in order of importance.
Tools To Use
There are various tools available to help us extract the real issues facing the business. The key two used by me are SWOT and Magic Wand. In the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats analysis, our work around weaknesses will highlight problems within our business. Weaknesses will focus on things internally that aren’t working. This could be poor marketing, team moral, cashflow issues, poor systems and the like. So as part of a more expansive exercise we can use this section to help us identify areas for improvement.
The second tool is the Magic Wand. In the group or with the business owner I’ll ask, “if you didn’t have to worry about how or the cost, what would you like to change in your business”? This opens peoples’ minds as to what the perfect business could look like and what we would like ours to look like. Once again, we are going to get things like better IT infrastructure, customers that pay on time, an in house marketing assistant, increased sales and more team training.
Selecting Priorities
The dilemma with coming up with a long list of problems or issues holding back our business is determining what to focus on first. How do we know which are the core problems and which ones are merely symptoms? The process can initially lead people to feeling overwhelmed when they are presented with literally dozens of issues to fix. We use a simple issue ranking exercise to first eliminate double ups and then to drill down on the most pressing issues that need to be addressed as a priority. Once people realise that there is a manageable list of key issues and that there is a process that can be used to deal with them, there is a sense of relief and excitement for what is possible.
All that remains to be done is to set up a project team or teams to work through the key issues in a logical and controlled sequence. Imagine if you could solve just one problem in your business each and every month. What rate of improvement do you think is possible? The results will come from making a start.
