Success & Planning

If there's 4 pillars for success - this ones about Planning

Planning is such a broad subject. It can do your head in. For some people, they just can't see the point. They know what they want to do and they want to just get on with it. For others, they start with a big picture and immediately get dragged down the rabbit holes of detail and what-if?

For a very few, planning is second nature and it seems effortless. Good on you if that's you.

I like to start with a vision. Trust me, I won't dive headlong into the pool of jargon and drag you with me. What I mean by a vision is looking beyond the horizon at where your company can ultimately end up. The beauty of a vision is that it doesn't have to have any basis in reality. It is your moonshot thinking.

But, once you've got a vision (and by the way, if the vision doesn't make you bounce out of bed a little more intensely, it's probably not a vision. It's just a nice idea), you need to lay big, bold marker posts along the way between where you are now and where you want to be. We can call them strategic objectives or strategic priorities or whatever clever term we like, but in the end, these are the important achievements that signal your progress. They don't have a lot of meat on the bones yet.

The meat on the bones is the individual operational plans that make the strategic objectives happen. This is not new technology, but it is time tested. Your operational plans work if they are SMART and for those that aren't familiar with SMART, it means Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Time Bound. This is where so many projects and plans fall down.

I can tell you from my own lengthy and varied history that nothing pulls people together as a cohesive team more than a concise, well thought out plan where everyone knows what part they play and own, they can see what success looks like as they progress, they know that it is able to be done but it will require their every commitment, that it is possible and that there is a deadline to work to.

You can look at planning in two ways. It's a pain in the arse or it's a route to success, happiness, efficiency and profit. I know which way I want to look at it and if you'd like some help with that in your business, give me a call.