PLANNING & EXECUTION ARE KEYS TO SURVIVING TODAY'S ECONOMIC REALTY
By Gary Drake, Director Operational Efficiency and Organizational Effectiveness For the CLIENT ADVOCATE NETWORK
Entrepreneurs are often advised to Make Your Plan, then Work Your Plan.
What does this mean? How can these concepts help me today? In our current turbulent times, making a plan and then working that plan may mean the difference of your business' success or failure.
In the business world, terms such as Strategic Plan, Business Plan, Production Plan, Marketing Plan, Sales Plan, and Financial Plan are thrown around frequently. Most of the time, these topics of conversations fall on deaf ears and are quickly forgotten. The entrepreneur may feel that these concepts only apply to large corporations. To many, these terms bring visions of time being wasted in boring meetings, resulting in reams of paper that will end up on bookshelf never to be looked at again. This perception in many cases is well justified, but it need not be.
Strategic Plans usually address a time horizon of 2 to 5 years, but can span up to 10 years. Business Plans have a time horizon of the next calendar or fiscal year. Production, Marketing, Sales, and Financial Plans are traditionally a part of both the Strategic and Business Plan. As the time horizon goes out, these plans are less detailed and more summarized.
KEY POINT: Any of these plans can be scaled into a single Entrepreneurial Plan to fit the particular size, type, and structure of your business. The process of writing this plan can be scaled so as not to be a burden. Why develop a plan? The Plan will help you identify goals and create a roadmap to recognize pitfalls and detours along the way to achieving them. Periodic review comparing the plan to reality will help you 'tweak' your actions to stay on course. This plan will also address longer-term issues and problems.
This Plan resides on your desk, not on your bookshelf.
The Entrepreneurial Plan, based on the type of business, may address the following:
→ Mission Statement
→ Vision
→ Definition of Business Model
→ Organization Chart
→ Previous Lessons Learned
→ Business Goals
→ Production Issues
→ New Product Development
→ Product Improvement
→ Capacity Issues
→ Capital Expenditures
→ Marketing Plan
→ Sales Plan
→ Financial Plan (Goals and Key Measurements)
→ Succession Planning - Staff Issues
→ SWOT Analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats)
The Plan, in addition to providing your business with goals and a roadmap of how to achieve them, will assist you in analyzing your business model and afford you the opportunity to measure success and difference to plan. Managing differences (i.e. variances) is a distinct advantage of using a plan. Otherwise, you could be making good time, but not be sure in what direction! Developing a Plan will also make you stop and think and question your logic or assumptions. What you thought was the situation, may turn out not to be the case at all.
Preparing the Plan may seem a long and daunting task, but in the end the business owner may find it well worth their time. The owner often sees things from a new perspective and may have mitigated many risks. The Plan also provides a guidepost for your employees.
Entrepreneurship is the ability to build a business by taking calculated risks. The process of Planning helps reduce risks. If you are putting your life savings on the line, endangering your family's stability, and borrowing other people's money, minimizing your exposure to risk is critical to you. The Planning process does not guarantee success but surely decreases the odds of failure.
Why continue to only hope things will get better? Do something about it. Make Your Plan - Work Your Plan.
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