How Effective is Your Plan for Success?
There’s an oft quoted saying, if you fail to plan, you’re planning to fail!
So, what is the value of having a plan?
Well, the process of putting a plan together, makes you much more likely to succeed if your mind is focussed on how to achieve your chosen goal.
By sitting down and working through what needs to happen to achieve your goal, you are much more likely to identify what you can do yourself, what you may need others to do for you, and when those activities need to be carried out.
Clarity of thought leads to clarity of action. And without ACTION, nothing will be achieved.
Thus, the value of a plan is in its implementation!
So where to begin?
As when setting out on a journey, we need to know where we are going! This means being clear on the outcome we wish to achieve, our Goal.
The clearer we are on our Goal, the more likely we will be motivated to carry out the necessary actions.
In short, it needs to be a personally motivating goal. Otherwise the actions become chores, rather than a means to a highly desirable end.
Choose a goal that makes you feel… WOW! If only I could achieve that.
Write down what achieving this goal would do for you… Maybe it will build more cash in the bank. If so, what will you do with that? How will you feel about that?
This vital step makes your motivation crystal clear and serves to support the creation of your plan and spurs you to carry out the actions it identifies.
How to write your plan?
With good old-fashioned paper and ink write out the personally motivating Goal we have just identified using the mantra SMART to help us:
Specific
Be specific on the outcome you want to achieve. If it is an increase in revenue, write how much you want the revenue to be in numbers and the period over which you want to achieve that, e.g. I want to increase revenue is too vague.
Measurable
As you can see above it is necessary to choose a goal that you can measure as you progress. Without this how can you be certain whether you have achieved it? What gets measured, gets managed!
Achievable
Be careful that the Goal you choose is realistically capable of being achieved. We all have pipe dreams of cruising on our luxury yachts to our private islands but in reality, that may be a few planning sessions away just yet! Herein lies the difference between these wild dreams and our plans… but by all means make a SMART plan to achieve your wildest dream, and share it with me!
Realistic
To test how realistic this goal is ask yourself questions like,
- Have others achieved it before you? and
- Did they have similar resource availability?
What we don’t want to do is set ourselves up for failure before we’ve even started!
Time bound
Be clear over what period you want to achieve your goal, or by what date you want to have achieved it. Not just in the next few months but during the three months of xxx to xxx, or by midnight on xxxxx. Clarity of dates and periods will all help in measuring your rate of progress as you execute your plan.
After this process we are left with a SMART Goal like,
I want to increase Revenue by 10% over the three months July to September, compared to the same period last year.
Next, we need to start considering the Activities that need to be carried out to achieve our Goal. I often recommend that clients just Brainstorm first. Don’t worry about the How or When or even by Who just yet, the important things is to capture everything that’s in your mind.
Once we’ve done that, then we can start to organise it!
Strategies
Depending on the scale of your Goal, you may need to first consider the key strategies that might help achieve your Goal, e.g. if it’s Revenue increase for your business, the strategies might be Telesales, Networking, Referrals, etc.
Activities
For each Strategy, we now need to list down the individual activities, to be carried out to deliver that particular strategy, e.g. for Networking, we might put our first activity as research potential networking groups to attend.
The second activity might be to call each group to find out more about what they could perhaps offer you and you them in return.
The third activity might be to select which one you want to attend first and so on until you have listed all the activities needed to deliver this particular strategy.
Now repeat this for each of your chosen Strategies.
Finally, against each activity, note who will do this (it may not always be you) and the timeframe in which the activity will be completed.
Now we have a Plan showing the Goal, the Strategies, WHAT needs to be done, WHO will do it and by WHEN.
So, what’s left? You might be tempted to say Do It! But how good are you at implementing plans?
Many of us are good at planning to do something, but not so good at actually getting round to doing it! So what could we do to make it much more likely that we do the do?
Maybe assistance can help here…
My clients get results through the tried and tested ActionCOACH system. Along with our expert strategic resources they are held accountable to complete their ACTIONs. Knowing that I will be asking so how did you get on? and how do you think that could have gone better? motivates them to see the plan through. After all, who wants the embarrassment of admitting they didn’t do anything?!
So, who could you ask to hold you accountable? Your spouse/partner/children? Anybody who you don’t want to disappoint.
In summary:
- Make a SMART plan
- Focus on your strategies to employ
- List your activities you need to do within those strategies
Let me know how your Plan works in ACTION!
