You know what a plan is right? Planning involves three key elements.
A plan is a noun, a verb and a date.
That’s it. That’s all there is to planning:
- Noun – as in “I”
will - Verb – as in “retire”
by - Date – as in “December 1”
I will retire by December 1. That’s the what of a plan.
Everything else is just tactical details. The how of the plan.
Many people go through business and life without planning. When you don’t have a plan… stuff happens. It just happens.
When you make a plan, you make stuff happen.
You can treat your business, your life, your business life as some fatalistic random sequence of events. You can wake up one day and say, how the heck did I get here?
Or
You can pick the events, the sequences, and wake up one morning and say, “I’ve made it, I’m here.”
Planning it is the first step to making it.
Monitoring, taking stock, adjusting that’s execution. That’s the hard part. That’s where planning can go awry.
Planning to lose twenty pounds by July 1st is a good plan unless I don’t change my diet, exercise, weigh myself to monitor my progress. If I don’t hold me accountable by me and/or others, it is unlikely that I will reach my goal. I can plan to increase revenue by 50% by December 31, but a plan without execution is just a dream.
Planning…. everyone does it. Executing plans is the devil in the details.
In today’s fast-paced, competitive, low-resourced business environment, people who run businesses spend much of their time in the business and very little of their time on the business. Planning, monitoring and being held accountable…. that’s valuable “on the business” time. Those who plan and execute meet their goals. Those that don’t wake up and say, “how the heck did I get here.”
I’m a business coach, I drag executives out of the weeds, out of the “in” of the business and onto the “on” of the business. I ask for plans, monitor progress and hold executives accountable so they wake up on where they planned to be. Want to know what it feels like to be dragged out of the weeds and to actually work on the business? Schedule a complimentary online one-on-one coaching session by pressing this thing-a-ma-jiggy, down there.
