Writing a business plan? Sounds easy enough but how often have you read your organisation's business plan, only to see it gather dust? What about the case of the business plan that never really get's finished? How do you know which direction you are travelling towards without a map?
If you are unsure if you need a business plan or think it's unnecessary for your team, read my post on Why every team needs a business plan. Within that post I outline the compelling reasons that will add value to your team, organisation and importantly yourself!
So I take it you are now tingling with excitement and ready to write your plan. Pull out your notebook and make a pot of coffee. In this part 1 I share with you the first three of five tried and true steps. Next week, in part 2 I will outline the final two steps and share the greatest business plan template of all time.
1. Set the vision and mission statements
Vision, mission, purpose, strategic objective - all great statement descriptors which organisations can spend a lot of time and resources to define. My view is don't overthink it. Have a balance of future focus that is aspirational but still links to your current operations. The important thing here is to ensure that the vison of the organisation and team resonates with it's people.
Go back to my post on The 3 Parts of Motivation: Purpose for inspiration. Some of the best vision statements I've seen use language that conveys an altruistic and big time goal. For example, Tesla's mission is "to accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable energy". With the vision statement "to create the most compelling car company of the 21st century by driving the world’s transition to electric vehicles". That would get the neurons firing if everyday you were working towards such a vision.
If you are a small business or team, then you can still get big time value from these statements. For example, an internal business function could desire to be "the company's best service partner and the team everyone wants to work with". Or if it's your own café business, how about "to serve the highest quality food everyday, sharing excitement and love to everyone who walks into our café". The statements act as compass for your business activities.
2. Identify the goals
Goal setting - my favourite activity. Personally, I love SMART goals with the structure of Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Time-bound. The SMART goal approach sets out a nice framework, but you need to find what works for you.
In my experiences, the goals should cover a few key areas of your business that I have listed below for inspiration. This is not a definitive list and it only scratches the surface of the areas you may want to cover. To help you get those creative juices flowing I've provided a few key questions to work with your team to uncover what goals you want to set.
Product and service offering:
What do we want to improve on? What hasn't worked well for us?
How will we be better then the competition?
How have our customer's expectations changed?
How can we serve our customers to a higher level?
Financial:
How will we drive revenue?
How will we lower costs of doing business?
What do we need to invest in?
What does our Board/CEO/Owner expect from us financially?
Risk and Safety:
What our business risks? What is the likelihood of the risks eventuating?
How could we improve safety for our employees and customers?
How will we respond to emerging risks in our industry? Do we have a plan to respond these risks?
Do our people have the tools and knowledge to operate our business safely?
People and team culture:
What is great about our team that we want to expand on?
How can our team work better?
How can we build our reputation and team brand?
What will we do to grow expertise and our skills?
3. Outline how you will measure success
Now we get to a sticky point. Measuring success can cause fear in the hearts of the uninitiated. Why? Because we cannot improve what we do not measure. With this comes pressure, but it also creates massive momentum to achieve goals.
You would not invest in a share portfolio and just hope for the best - you would be looking at the data, movements and return on investment. All the while, making changes and tweaks to maximise your investment. Same goes for your business.
In my experience, having a balance of quantitative and qualitative measurements lead to ultimate success. These can be either leading or lagging measures depending on what information you have. If you have no information then you need to start collecting it! Here is a little list of general measurements you can apply to almost any business:
Quantitative - measured by data and metrics:
Revenue, sales, price point, profit, expenses, cash held (or any other accounting figures) - for historic, current and projections trends and variances
Volume of product/services and ranked for performance - to know when to drop product lines or review stock
Number of customers, new customers, customer churn, life time value of customers - to understand your customer better
Workplace injuries and incidents - for improved safety management
Advertising and website visits - cost of customer acquisition
Employee recruitment and turnover - to identify potential management issues
Qualitative - information collected via feedback and observation:
Demographics of customers - to understand customers and growth potential
Employee professional development plans - to see performance improvements
Customer loyalty, satisfaction and feedback - for changing your service or product model
Customer engagement - understanding what marketing is working for customers
Brand awareness and recognition - identifying what promotion strategies are working
Workload management - support managing individual work capacities, reducing burnout
Responsive and resilience team - knowing how well the team can manage change
In the next instalment I will outline the last two vital steps that cannot be missed and provide you with the greatest business plan template. So start mapping out the first three steps above and I'll see you back here soon!
If you are so excited to get going for the full business plan and can't wait, just contact me via the Think Ascend website and I can send you the template right away and help you get started!
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