When it comes to planning, consider the words of General George Patton, ‘A weak plan that is executed will deliver better results than a great plan never executed.’ Sometimes simple is sophisticated!
Likewise, while a business plan is critical, a concise action plan is necessary for success. Lay out your goals along with time-frames for completion. Incorporate ownership for critical tasks and measurements to evaluate success. Make this your road map to success! Your success plan will set the direction for your business and keep you on track once you’re up and running.

Look Back Before You Plan Ahead – Know where you are today before you start planning where you want to go. Look at your financials and key performance indicators. How do they compare against your last year goals and your industry?

Then take a few minutes to write down your accomplishments (big and small) for the previous twelve months or last quarter. It’s important that you recognize the things you did well. Finally, make a short list of the things you didn’t accomplish and ask yourself what held you back and what lessons did you learn. Don’t dwell on these, but apply lessons learned as you move forward.

Chunk, Chunk, Chunk – Big goals are nothing more than a series of much smaller ones. If a goal you want appears too big to conquer or takes a long time to accomplish, chunk it up into smaller ones over shorter time periods.
Smaller goals and strategies are much easier to handle and together will move them to the bigger goal.

Think Big – It pays to think big when setting goals. The old saying ‘shoot for the stars and if you fall short you will hit the moon’ explains why.
Often we set ‘safe’ goals because we fear failure or simply can’t figure out how we can get there. Sure it’s safe to set a 5% growth or improvement goal — but what if you chose instead a 30% improvement and asked for advice on how. Employees, alliances, suppliers, other business owners and yes, a Business Coach, are all great sources for new ideas, but you need to ask. What if you fall a little short and only grow 20%? You are still better off than you would have been with a 5% improvement! So think big and believe you can.

Measure, Measure, Measure –  Would you ever play a round of golf and not keep score? Not likely, because you want to know if you improved or beat your previous best. The same is true in business. If you don’t link measurements to your goals, the you have no way to evaluate how you are doing. What we measure, we can improve.

If you would like to be learn more about mapping your road to success then consider my next workshop.