Time to Start Your Yearly Plan for 2008!
Yes – we are all focused on the holidays. And we still need to think about next year, so we can PAY for the holidays!
2008 is looking a little spooky. Some pundits say the fear and loathing is all in the minds of the public and it will be a good year. The problem is, ‘the public’ is an idiot. People are great. Crowds are insane.
So, it may be a good idea to start thinking now about the new year. Here are some questions for you to toss around with your management team.
- Who are we? (What is our business?)
- What are we selling? (What are we solving?)
- Who do we serve? (Where’s their pain?)
- Who do we want to serve? (Why aren’t we?)
- Who do we want to leave behind? (Why?)
- What do we do best? (Can we do it better?)
- What needs improvement? (Can we train for that?)
- What should we stop doing? (nod to Marshall Goldsmith)
- What activities create the majority of our profit? (Why?)
- What slows us down? (Where’s the bottleneck?)
- Where are our obstacles? (Can we overcome them?)
- What does our industry look like in one year, five years?
- What different ways can we respond to our changing marketplace? (new products, new ways to package old products, new demographics, delete or dissolve ineffective products or services…)
- Keep going — brainstorm questions appropriate to your industry. Talk about expectations & standards. Look at the changing face of your business and focus on the solutions you offer, the solutions you need internally, the resources you need.
While you are at it… don’t stop with THE PLAN. Add one more piece:
“How will we implement this sucker?” (technical phrase)
The greatest challenge with PLANS isn’t the development of them… it’s the implementation and execution.
“By golly, that sure is a purty plan. We got ourselves a nice mission statement. We paid a lot of money and spent a lot of time on this vision. And we even got us some goals. OK, now, back to work.”
We get lost in the emails and other correspondence. We do things to pay the bills today. We sometimes pull that plan out or gaze lovingly at it up there on the bulletin board. But if we don’t get our teams to buy in and plan to execute THE PLAN, we’ll be putting the same things on our list next year.
365 days goes by fast.
50 work weeks (with vacation and sick days removed)
2,000 (supposedly) hours spent gainfully working
- How many of those hours will be wasted on trivia
- How many will be wasted on email
- How many will be devoted to Creative Problem Solving, Productivity Improvement, Revenue Growth (and, if you use it,) EBITDA analysis?
Plan to Implement THE PLAN with the help of your staff.
Involve them this year. It doesn’t have to be painful.
ASK for input, ideas, solutions. Get down to specifics. Get their take on your plan. Will it really work? Or is it a pipe dream from folks in the head office who haven’t been on the front line in years? What are the obstacles they see? What are options for implementation from their point of view? What are potential downsides to this plan? The Unintended Consequences? What do you expect to happen? Get input from the ones who implement it and you increase the potential for buy-in.
If you need help, call us. We actually have a plan of our own that will help YOU execute YOUR PLAN.
All the best,
Beth
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Beth Terry, CSP, is a Professional Speaker and Trainer with Executive and Management experience in Real Estate, Insurance, and Retail. Many of her clients are in those fields as well as Hospitality and other Service Industries. Contact her for more information.
© 2007 Beth Terry Seminars, Inc
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