‘Where are you Going?’
My previous Blog introduced ‘The 4 Step Business Plan’, a simple and easy way to start writing and structuring your business plan. It is based on the concept of approaching planning just as you would organising a long trip.
Step 1 is to understand where you are going, your Vision. Look into a crystal ball and list the features that describe how you want your business to look in the short term, (1 to 3 years) and longer term, (5+ years). You will probably have more short term items listed than longer term as forecasting and planning becomes more difficult the further you look into the future. Try and commit yourself to specific dates, e.g. ‘1 Sept 26’, rather than ‘1 year’, as the latter timescale can be harder to pin down.
The broader and more detailed your Vision the better. Consider areas such as business structure, financials, markets, products, people, duties and responsibilities. It is also important to include your personal Vision, that is, your short and long term aspirations for life outside of work. Your business and personal Visions are closely linked and the aim must be to work towards achieving both rather than one at the expense of the other.
The support and buy in of your team will be vital if you are to achieve your ambitions. Share relevant elements of your Vision with your people and by doing so encourage others to do the same. Although there will be an overall common purpose, it is important that everyone understands that different needs and priorities exist within any team and recognising this can improve working relationships between board members, groups of managers or across departments.
Thinking of your business as an entity, try and summarise its overarching aim in one sentence – this is your Mission Statement. Consider involving a range of colleagues in this process, both junior and senior, new recruits and long serving employees, in order to gain different views and perspectives.
Backing up your Mission Statement are your broad beliefs that you feel underpin what your team does and how they interact with colleagues, suppliers and customers – your Values. Gaining employee ownership of your Values is crucial and makes managing performance far easier – if employees have suggested ‘Always Put the Customer First’ as a Value, it should be relatively easy to gain their agreement to work to a set of standards for quality and service.
Step 1 helps us to establish our desired destination. To prepare for the journey we now need to establish our current position. We will look at Step 2, ‘Where are you Now?’ in the next Blog.