IN THE KNOW —
Your One-Page Action Plan for 2019 A couple of months ago, I met with a prospective client (who has since hired me) to talk about their business and why it wasn’t going as well as it could. They sent me their business plan ahead of time so I could familiarise myself with their situation. Their plan was very comprehensive and, while there was nothing too much wrong with it, the plan was long and was obviously produced from a corporate template of some description. (They hadn’t completed a couple of sections fully as they didn’t know what they meant.) When I asked them how often they referred to the plan, they admitted that since completing it they had kind of forgotten about it. In my opinion it is not necessary to write a long plan. Better to keep it short and focused on the critical things that need to be done in order to move the business forward, or address critical problems. Too many people focus on producing a nice looking document and miss the main point of planning. Fine if you need to put something in front of the bank manager, but for internal consumption, less is definitely more.
1. Plan For Action
tegic ACTION Keep your plan to one page. Think “stra t are the Wha plan”, not strategic development plan. to move week next do to specific actions that you need ard? an essential project forw
Planning should be about setting out the steps needed to move you from where you now to where you want/ need to be. A coach that I have used in helping me with my business, Taki Moore suggested the following five principles when talking business planning:
2. Call a Time-Out
ther to reset Make a time each week to take a short brea week to next the for ed need s task your mind, list out the to paper. this mit com and ard forw ct proje nt move a curre
3. Review For wards
the past year Look at where you have been tracking for . Is this year next the for ard forw that te and extrapola taking even or flat, where you want to be? Is the track just you in the wrong direction?
Contact me and I will help you put an effective, action plan together for 2019 that will help focus your efforts and achieve great results. Email me at andy@tradescoach.co.nz or phone my office on 09 912 1901.
4. Plan Backwards
t, “start with As Stephen Covey says in his second habi then plan and e gam end the end in mind”. Imagine the achieve to ired requ n actio g edin the immediately prec last one, the re befo ired requ n actio the Then . that state e at arriv you then the one before that, and so on until out ped map path a have then your current situation. You time from te devia to need you if even , before you to follow to time.
5. Enter The Four Altitudes
, 10,000ft In flying terms, I mean 30,000ft, 20,000ft to three lates trans this s term ning plan In ay. and runw cts proje terly quar to five year vision, 12-month goals, ents elem brief have to is and weekly actions. The aim ns are aligned of each in your one-page plan so that actio to longer-term outcomes.
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