New Year, New Start, New Plan?

12 DAYS LEFT….ARE YOU PLANNING YOUR BUSINESS SUCCESSES FOR 2015 WITH THE TIME THAT’S LEFT?

Setting your vision for the year ahead is good practice. If planned properly, that should be more worthwhile than setting your new year’s resolution which, apparently, only 25% of people achieve!

This is seen as a good time to set some new goals. A New Year = A New Start. If your business has been going badly, it could be a time for change and doing things differently. If business has gone well, it’s time to think about how you can stretch your management team to do even better!

“In preparing for battle I’ve always found that plans are useless, but planning is essential”.

Dwight Eisenhower

I have sat in the company of many business owners who think that business planning is a paper exercise. With only a few days left in 2014, managers groan at the thought. They view this as something done purely to raise capital or money for their business. However, used in the right way, a Business Plan can be so much more.

1. A Holistic Approach: Research shows that you are two and a half times more likely to succeed if you have a plan in place. Taking the time to develop a business plan forces you to review your entire business all at once. You get time to reflect on your business proposition, any relevant marketing assumptions, operational and staffing requirements, and the financial numbers to support it. This holistic approach ensures that you spot connections between things that you might otherwise have missed.
2. Staff Loyalty: Your business plan is an output of your overall business strategy. Linked to that prophecy are goals and targets to achieve. Having reviewed the nuts and bolts of your business, use your business plan to link it to your staff’s performance goals making it part of your annual appraisal system. This can instil loyalty in your staff. Indirectly, this may also help you to retain staff as you determine ways to develop and upskill them to deliver your plan.
3. With a clear direction in mind, it becomes easier to set your existing staff loose on your customers. They know what they need to achieve. Where goals are too vague, your staff will have little or no direction or commitment to achieve what the business truly needs.
4. Hiring the right people: Recently, a newly appointed manager asked me what he should cover as part of an induction day with a newcomer on the team. The first thing I suggested was to pull out the company’s strategy and business plan. If properly understood, this would show that the company had put time and thought into planning their future. It would also ensure that the new staff member knew what the company was aiming to achieve. The role that she has been hired to fulfil as part of that, should be obvious. If it isn’t, either he’d hired the wrong person, or written a very poor description of the role.

The benefits of business planning are obvious. With only 12 days to go to 2015, try to be ahead of the game. See it as a challenge. If you plan what you are going to deliver in your business next year, you’re actually halfway there. By writing it down and sharing it with your team and your staff, you’ve publically made a commitment to achieving it. So what’s your new year’s resolution going to be this year? Will you be in amongst the 75% of people who fail, or the 25% who stick to it?

Jean Talbot is the owner of Lamplighter Associates, a Business Coaching & Consulting company operating in Yorkshire. The company specialises in long term planning, process improvement and change for SMEs. If you are struggling to determine where you want your business to be next year, contact me. I can help you determine your direction and ensure you are focused on growing and improving your business in 2015.