According to a study published by Harvard University leaders, only 3% of people have written goals and plans – these people account for 98% of the wealth.
The same study also revealed that 27% people have verbal goals and 70% have no written or verbal goals or plans.
Planning and writing business goals are integral to achieving business success because they make you accountable for your actions. For instance, if you sign up for personal training sessions in January, then you’re more likely to go because you’ve committed yourself to them. However, if you’ve just told yourself in your head that you’re going to go, you’re less likely to stick to it.
By signing up, you’ve made yourself accountable for delivering the action. The same principle applies to your business goals.
However, as powerful as planning and writing down your business goals might be, it’s an action few SME business owners tend to do for a whole host of reasons, which include:
- Not knowing which format to use – so they decide to keep everything in their head instead or dotted about on different pieces of paper
- Being too busy – many SMEs mistakenly think planning involves producing detailed documents, which they don’t have the time for. However, it can be as straightforward or complex as you choose to make it
- Not being keen to commit to their actions – the moment you write something down, the more realistic it becomes, which is one of the reasons why so many SME owners choose not to put pen to paper in the first place….
In the words of highly-acclaimed personal time management author, Alan Lakein, ‘Planning is bringing the future into the present so that you can do something about it now.’
When you start to write things down, you’re not just taking a more organised and focused approach to achieving your goals, you’re taking accountability for delivering your vision. There are many ways in which SME business owners can make themselves more accountable for their actions, here are three of them:
- Get into the flow of planning and writing your business goals down on a regular basis. (Methods could include SMART goals or a simple one page summary of objectives for the year ahead).
- Share your plan with your senior management team.
- Look to review your plan at your monthly management meetings, which will ensure everybody is held accountable for their actions.
Planning = clarity + focus
Planning ahead allows busy SME business owners to deliver on their headline objectives and their team to successfully complete a series of small, easy-to-manage tasks.
The secret to delivering any form of plan is to break each activity down into its individual component parts. 90-day planning enables businesses to do just that.
The most effective 90-day planning involves:
- Getting clarity on the long-term objectives of your business
- Working out precisely what needs to be focused on in the next 90 days to ensure its achievable
- Defining the individual task elements of each objective and allocating resource and responsibility to each
- Agreeing timeframes
Do you want to transform your business through the power of planning and written goals? Contact us today on 0113 394 4559 or enquiries@nextlevelbd.co.uk to see how we can help you implement the best practice advice featured in this blog.