"An action plan not a business plan"
In the current climate, it is easy for you as a business owner to simply soldier on dealing with all the day to day difficulties that your business faces. But a business operating without any kind of plan is far more likely to fail or achieve its potential than a business working with one.
Business plans have a bad reputation because people often think in terms of ten page documents explaining everything about the business to the outside world. A good business plan only needs to be a one page action plan setting out what will be done, by whom and by when.
Forty years ago a study was undertaken at Yale University to identify which characteristics made people successful. Amongst all the criteria analysed one stood out. Over 20 years, the 3% with a plan accumulated more wealth than the 97% without one.
Top sports stars often think about what they want to achieve and then the level of performance they need to reach in order to achieve that outcome. Then they list out all the things that they need to do in order to reach that performance level. And then as Nike is fond of saying they "just do it"
But you don’t just have to be an Olympic athlete to think like this. Every owner manager should be thinking in the same way and as soon as you have that list of things to do you get on and do it. If you think in this way the performance and the outcome will take care of themselves.
Help is at hand
But if it is that easy why doesn’t everybody do it?
Well the simple answer is that you often need some outside help. An experienced strategic planner can over the course of a day help you to identify the individual things that you need to do in order to be wherever it is you want to be in five years time. A4G developed the unique Improve and Grow strategic planning session and have been running these sessions since 2002 with the owner-managers of many businesses large and small.
A4G run a Strategic Planning Day where owner-managers can identify where they want their business to be in five years time and what changes are needed to get there.
To find out more, see the A4G Strategic Planning Day page, and for further information or to make a booking call Jenny Foster on (01474) 853 856.
