Happy New Year. We’re back. It’s a new year and it’s time to do some planning. I know you probably did your resolutions on the 31st of December. You’ve probably forgotten what they are because you were drinking. Now we’re back at work, we need to have a think about what we’re going to do for the next 12 months. Now I’m talking calendar months, not financial year months here. You can do the same thing for financial year if you want, but we’re kind of halfway through the year.
Let’s talk about your financial plan. A financial plan is not just something that your bank wants. It’s not something that your business coach says you need to have. It should be a living, breathing, useful document.
Here at HBA Encompass we use a one-page business plan and it’s a big Excel spreadsheet that we can print out on A3. We can put pictures and colours and all kinds of things in it, but what it is, is a graphical or visual reminder of what we’re going to do.
What we do is we look a long way forward, we look at our big hairy audacious goals where we want to be in the future and then we go, well, if we’re going to get there, how are we going to do this? What steps do we need to take? And we break it down.
We say, OK, in three years this is where we need to be. In one year, this is where we need to be. And then we go, if we want to move from where we are now to where we want to be in 12 months, what steps do we need to take? Then we break it down even further. We go into a 90-day plan. We chunk it down. We say these are the five things that we need to do to get this to happen.
You can have a one-page plan that’s at whole of business level but the 90 day plan needs to be further broken down into “must do’s” that incorporates your whole team. That’s what you have team for. We’re not wearing 10hats but hopefully only wearing one or two. We’ve got other people to help us.
The plan is simple, look at the 90 day plan and work out who can help me achieve what I need to do to get where I am? You then work with your team, and you give people that are involved their own 90day plans.
If you want to know more about business planning, particularly one day plans, reach out because it’s something that I really enjoy, and I can show you how we use ours. I can give you the template and you can go forth and takeover the world.