Plan for a Successful 2010

Naturally we all plan and it occurs in everyday life. Although business planning is a bit more complex and requires strategies and targets, we all have the capability of doing so and should take advantage of what has been given to us.

Planning should ultimately provide direction. The direction should confirm, what is to be done, when it is done, how it is done and who is to do it.

The summer break is a great time to start thinking about where you want to be over the next year. When you plan you will be potentially be setting goals or targets for short terms or long term periods and therefore you will need to investigate ways and means of making these plans realistic, practical and achievable. Poor plans usually offer no assistance and portray an unclear focus for those involved.

Before the planning process can take shape, you must firstly have a goal or objective in which you want to achieve. This means that there is a target that you are aiming for.

You should also assess your current capabilities and determine if you are in a position to realistically achieve your goals and how you arrived at your current decision.

A time parameter will need to also be determined so that you have a specific time schedule for you to achieve your goal or target.

It maybe necessary for you to generate a fairly comprehensive SWOT analysis to determine your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats that may contribute or effect you reaching your aim.

Depending on what level of management you are, you will be involved in different planning projects and planning processes so you will need to apply different techniques and strategies to suit.

Planning will be used for finance, production, personnel, organisational structuring, market conditions, marketing strategies and the list goes on.

Plans will assist you to use your time wisely, adjust your environment to achieve the desired goal or target effectively and apply contingencies to reduce the level of failure.

If you plan right you will ensure that the results are going to be to your expectations or higher.

Below are six steps to help you plan better:

• Establish a realistic goal and target to be achieved within a certain time frame.
• List all the things that will need to happen that will allow you to achieve your goal or target.
• Prioritise the activities from first step to last step. A flow chart may help you.
• Discuss your plan with those who will be involved or affected by it.
• Implement your plan once it has been finalised and you are happy with it
• Monitor and refer back to your plan to ensure you are on track and your aim is in the near distance.

Whether you follow this process or some variation of it, the important thing is to actually take some time out of your usual business day and do it. Often it is the planning process itself that is far more valuable than the physical plan that results. A simple one page plan prepared effectively is far more useful than a 20 page plan prepared robotically, following some fancy template. The process of reviewing where you are at, where your strengths and weaknesses are and getting other staff to but into the process is vital to drive the business forward in a more focused and effective way.

Essential Christmas Reads - Part 2

My last post introduced a range of business books that all business owners should read at some stage, if not already. Once you have knocked them off, here are 5 more that should also add to your knowledge, vision and enthusiasm for business ownership.

I welcome your comments and feedback on whether you have enjoyed these books or not and what other titles you think should be on the list.

Getting Everything You Can Out of All You’ve Got
Jay Abraham

This book provides some powerful strategies for boosting your business. The author believes that anyone can advance in life by tapping into hidden assets and developing the right mindset. He writes, "You are surrounded by simple, obvious solutions that can dramatically increase your income, power, influence and success. The problem is, you just don't see them."

Abraham's central theme is that everyone is in sales. In almost any profession, people must be skilled at selling themselves and their ideas, not just their company's product or service.

Business owners with the itch to grow must read this book. The ideas are varied enough to work with kitchen-table businesses, as well as large firms, because they are outstanding and because they are communicated so well.


The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership
John C Maxwell

What would happen if a top expert with more than thirty years of leadership experience were willing to distil everything he had learned about leadership into a handful of life-changing principles just for you?

The result is a revealing study of leadership delivered in an easy-to-understand and easier-to-implement style.


The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
Steven Covey

True success encompasses a balance of personal and professional effectiveness, so this book is a manual for performing better in both arenas

This awesome book presents a holistic, integrated, principle-centred approach for solving personal and professional problems. With penetrating insights and pointed anecdotes, Covey reveals a step-by-step pathway for living with fairness, integrity, service, and human dignity - principles that give us the security to adapt to change and the wisdom and power to take advantage of the opportunities that change creates.
This isn't a quick-tips-start-tomorrow kind of book. The concepts are sometimes intricate, and you'll want to study this book, not skim it. When you finish, you'll probably have Post-it notes or hand-written annotations in every chapter, and you'll feel like you've taken a powerful seminar by Covey.

Raving Fans
Ken Blanchard

Your customers are only satisfied because their expectations are so low and because no one else is doing better. Just having satisfied customers isn't good enough anymore. If you really want a booming business, you have to create Raving Fans

Raving Fans uses a brilliantly simple and charming story to teach how to define a vision, learn what a customer really wants, institute effective systems, and make Raving Fan Service a constant feature in your business.


Loosing My Virginity
Richard Branson

In this autobiography, Virgin Group founder Richard Branson says one of his prime business criteria is "fun." Fun made Branson a billionaire, and few business memoirs are one-billionth as fun as Branson's, nor as niftily written.

Must Reads for Your Christmas Holidays

With Christmas coming up I hope you will have some time to take a bit of a break and spend some quiet time away from the pressures of business ownership. If you are a retailer, this probably won't apply and so I hope you are flat out with queues of customers buying up everything that you have available! Your time for rest will come at a different time if the year. For the rest of us, I recommend spending some of that time off in reading a good business book or two. But with literally thousands of titles out there, where should you start? Over the next couple of posts I will suggest 10 titles that you should consider as must reads that will give you much needed skills in a range of business ownership areas. In no particular order, here are my first five:-


Think and Grow Rich by Napolean Hill

Here are money-making secrets that can change your life. Inspired by Andrew Carnegie's magic formula for success, this book will teach you the secrets that will bring you a fortune. It will show you not only what to do but how to do it. Once you learn and apply the simple, basic techniques revealedhere, you will have mastered the secret of true and lasting success. And you may have whatever you want in life.


The E-Myth Revisited by Michael Gerber

If you own a small business, or if you want to own a small business, this book was written for you.


The One Minute Manager by Ken Blanchard

An easily-read story which quickly demonstrates three very practical management techniques - you will understand why these apparently simple methods work so well with so many people.

The book is brief, the language is simple, and best of all...it works.


The Sales Bible by Jeffrey Gitomer

This book is an absolutely essential tool for every serious business owner.
“It should be read, reviewed and referred to every single day."
It can be digested in quick bite-sized lessons and contains 100’s of proven techniques and healthy thinking about building business relationships.


Good To Great by Jill Collins

Making the transition from Good to Great doesn't require a high-profile CEO, the latest technology, innovative change management, or even a fine-tuned business strategy. At the heart of the rare and truly great companies is a corporate culture that rigorously found and promoted disciplined people to think and act in a disciplined manner. Peppered with dozens of stories and examples from the great and not so great, the book offers a well-reasoned road map to excellence that any organisation would do well to consider.


Why should you spend time reading business books rather than fishing magazines this summer? The answer can be summed up by Edward Demming, the quality expert: "Learning is not compulsory, but neither is survival"

If you have some "must reads" of your own, I would love to know and so would other readers of this blog. Please leave a comment below by clicking on the link.

Making Staff Meetings Better

The staff meeting — or "stiff meeting" as it is sometimes known in many companies — can become a colossal waste of time. No surprise, but the staff meeting is a boring and even a dreaded part of the business world. Many consider staff meetings a practical alternative to work; as a place to jot down their grocery list or to refine their drawing skills. All because there is too little thought invested in the planning or the execution of the meeting.

Put some thought and planning into your staff meetings to fully engage your team and it can help you boost productivity, increase the effectiveness of decision-making, head off emergencies, reduce the number of problems that require your attention, make for happier staff and create a smoother running, more profitable operation. Following are some ideas to breathe new life into your staff meeting:

1. Link the agenda with your company goals. For instance, if one of the overarching goals is to drive increased sales, then list "Sales" as an item on your agenda. Underneath that heading you can cover off one part of the sales process and use the opportunity to hone people’s skills bit by bit. The same agenda should flow from week to week, but focus on a different part of the process to improve.

2. Purpose. Be very clear what the purpose of the meeting is and if it is just because we have to have a meeting each week to have a general catch up, then do you really need it? Meetings can have many purposes. Keep a meeting to one purpose only and invite those who only need to be there to add value to that purpose.

3. Think outside the box. Another overlooked objective of effective staff meetings is training. Properly conducted staff meetings are a forum for continuous improvement. Maybe showing a video aimed at sparking new ideas or improving processes may be the appropriate thing to do once in a while. Variety helps to keep it fresh.

5. Hold meetings regularly. The more frequently meetings are held, the better. In certain situations, daily meetings are appropriate. In others, weekly will do. Let too many days slip by and you risk sending the wrong message to your team. Make them short and have them often. Stand up meetings at the whiteboard can be better than sit down ones at the boardroom table. People who stand will be more focused in what they say and will want to get on with their jobs.

6. Get in and get out. Timeliness is critical to running an effective meeting. Start it on time and end when you say you will. Fine those people who are late, or lock the door at the appointed time and see how people improve their time-keeping. That honors the schedules of other members of the team.

7. Write up the minutes. The minutes provide the foundation for the next meeting's agenda. At the beginning of the meeting, make sure someone is assigned to write up what happened and what you're planning to make happen; in other words, who's going to do what by when. Keep the minutes short and use bullet point lists often. Ensure minutes are out to attendees within an hour of the meeting if possible, or certainly within the day at latest.

8. Rotate leadership. Just as the minute-taker's function should rotate, so too could that of the leader. Try making the person in charge of the minutes one week be in charge of running the next meeting. That provides more accountability and a greater stake in getting the minutes written clearly, concisely and on time.

9. Open the books. Always provide people a good fundamental understanding of where the business is going. Don't just provide a cursory statement like, "Business is good" or "Profits are down." Go into detail, at least setting out revenue and gross profit position. The better informed your staff, the better decisions they'll make.

A bit of planning before meetings and focusing on keeping the meeting short, on topic and with clear, time-bound actions agreed at the end will result in more energized staff and better productivity. Try it and see.