“A Goal without a Plan is just a dream”

Business planning doesn’t need to be onerous, and it doesn’t need you to be thinking about specific detail years in advance.  By all means have an idea of where you’d like to get to in three or five years, but there is so much water that will pass under the bridge in that time, an accurate long term plan is almost impossible to curate.

However, having a strong 12 month plan is essential.  In fact, there are three great articles on the Blog page about planning;

• Effective business planning,
• How to make your business planning practical
• How to use 90-day planning to achieve your business goals.

The theory is quite simple:

1) Set yourself one major goal, the one you really want to achieve in the next 12 months

2) Break your business down into its component parts eg. Sales, Finance, Production etc.

3) Set yourself 12 month goals in all of those areas that will mean you hit your main goal.

4) Reverse engineer those goals into quarterly targets

5) Take your first quarter, break that down into months, and set yourself tasks each month you need to acheive to hit your first 90 day goals.

Most importantly, give yourself time to do this.

You will thank yourself.