It’s perhaps THE most important ingredient for business success.  How do you know what you need to do operationally if you don’t know where you are going and what you hope it will look like when you arrive?

• How do you know what kind of people to employ if you don’t know what resources you need?
• How do you make investment decisions if you don’t know which top three activities will return the biggest impact for your business?
• How do you inspire your people if you don’t know what the mission is?

I could go on….

All too often, we get busy responding to the day to day running of our businesses, reacting to our customer and client demands, managing our people, watching our daily sales performance.  We may even potter on successfully this way for some time.

But what if we were to take out just one or two days and really commit to a constructive, inspiring planning session?  Imagine just how much more success we could create for our businesses, how much more inspired and motivated our people could be and how much more efficient and focussed our businesses could operate.

Here are my top tips for making business planning easy:

1. Always start with an inspirational vision and think bigger than the next two years – there’s no point thinking small if BIG can be achieved.
2. Get your people involved. People are more excited about delivering something if they’ve been involved in the creation of the idea.
3. Commit some quality time (and I mean quality time) every year to review and recreate the plan.  It’s a good time to tie this in with your financial year-end.
4. Make the process interactive, fun and include activities that will appeal to both the left (logical) and right (creative) side of brains to ensure you engage with all resources available.
5. Always review your ideas with your ‘ideal’ customer in mind.  If your customers won’t get it, BIN IT!  You should be aiming to DELIGHT!
6. Communicate your plan in a fun and inspiring way to all employees ensuring that everyone knows how their role contributes to the success of the plan.
7. Review your plan at least quarterly.  There is no point investing the time creating a plan if you’re not going to review your success against how your market is evolving.]
8. Hire an independent resource who can challenge, inspire and manage the planning of your planning so you can carry on driving your business towards your vision.

Do you have a plan for your business and your people that will help you succeed in your market?

To find out more about how my bespoke planning workshops could accelerate your business growth, call 07786 250 175 or email jennifer@simplyjp.com