Action Required! Even if you have to plan for it.

By Talmar Anderson
Originally published Oct. 24, 2013

Growth and strategies can be some of the most exciting parts of running a business.  Picturing the big “DREAM” and what life will look like on that other side. Maybe you met with your advisory board.  Maybe you and your partner split a half day and a whole bottle of wine.  Maybe you and a consultant devised an action plan (shameless plug).  However you accomplish your planning; the goal is set. You have decided to double your sales.  And then you leave that planning meeting and get back to everyday work.  A client has a valid complaint.  Your vendor for janitorial services is going out of business.  Not to mention the accounts receivable seem to be slowing down.  So do you take those plans and put them on the shelf until things “slow down” or you “catch up”?  I think you know what will happen then…

Nothing will happen if you just go back to your day to day operations.  It takes ACTION to turn your VISION into reality. Strategic planning or identification of opportunities for growth requires action as the follow up.  Not just the action of fulfilling the details of process and procedure.  The action must be timely.  Maybe you identified a possible revenue diversification.  Perhaps there is an opportunity for business partnership that could benefit your company.  Maybe it is just time to scale up what your company is offering to be able to support more clients and more of the marketplace.  The loss of momentum and motivation to grow can be further exacerbated by losing the timeliness of the decisions thus creating a higher probability of failure.  What was relevant to the marketplace and economies of the company when you planned can very easily be obsolete 6 months or 2 years later when you finally dust off the binder, cocktail napkin or action plan documents. If you find that you have had a series of great ideas that do not progress then you need to look to yourself and your calendar.

To ensure success from your strategic meetings and goal setting efforts, follow these 3 steps.  After all, we don’t want those meeting to result only in hot air. It is helpful to have the ideas in the back of your mind helping to skew a decision one way or the other as they are presented to you but that puts you in the reactionary role. Reactionary roles will not really progress your business.  Commit the time to reaching your goals.  That means it has to go on your calendar!  Creating time in your schedule to create process, assign responsibilities, and meet with others that can help progress your company towards those goals will be a recipe for success.  It can also be the light at the end of long days.  When you know that movement towards the bigger goals are progressing simultaneously, you can motivate yourself to deal with the daily items like staffing issues that come up but aren’t fun.

The next step occurs within each consecutive meeting for your strategic plans. To make sure that each of the next progress sessions is successful you need to end your meetings with a calendar of events tied to the action plan and a specific follow up date. Do you see the pattern here?  Even if you are only planning each meeting one at a time you still need to commit the time to create an item list of what should occur before the next meeting and what the next meeting will need to accomplish.

Lastly, prioritize these calendared events.   You can bump the next event a little if you have to but ONLY if you set a new date within a week of the original date.  You must progress to effect change.  You must take steps to reach goals.  You must take action to grow. Yes, your current business needs will still be calling upon you for more time and energy but won’t getting to the goal you have set have even greater rewards?  It is your job as the leader of your company to keep progressing with purpose.