by JimRaffel on January 2, 2012
Planning works. A year ago, I shared The 2011 Plan and last week I shared the success story of that plan when I wrote “How to make what you write come true.” Finding a planning method that works for you is, unfortunately, not so easy. I’ve settled on a method that combines Chris Brogan’s three words method and the visual thinking approach of Sketchnotes, which results in the drawing included with this post.
The 2012 Plan dissected
Growth – One of last year’s words was “customers” and it turned out to be the key word. We learned two important pieces of information about our customers in 2011: Who they are and where to find them online. Armed with that knowledge and the other two words in this year’s plan, significant growth of the ventures I am involved in is achievable.
Automate – Late last year, I had an “ah-ha” moment related to automation. A task worth doing manually is worth automating. If it’s not, then stop doing the task entirely. Your business is not truly systemized until most – if not all – of the business processes are automated. It takes more time to delegate and train those to whom you are delegating if the process is not automated. Automated tasks have a much higher probability of being done correctly.
Teams – It’s one thing to hire people to help you. It’s quite another to empower them to manage the team without you. This year, progress must happen without my involvement. Handing over business processes that have been automated is one way to ensure this outcome. While I can and sometimes will be a player on the teams I help create, I don’t intend to ever be the coach.
Back to growth
The strategy that came out of this planning exercise is: More and more of my time must be dedicated to tasks focused on long-term enterprise growth. Some might call this sales. I’ll be out searching for the relationships that allow us to partner our technology and knowhow with new audiences in 2012.
Here’s to an awesome 2012. Lets’ do this!
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by JimRaffel on December 20, 2011
Most of us have a pretty good idea where we are going. That’s normally not the difficult part. It’s the journey between where we currently are and where we want to be that turns out to be tricky. Challenges, like roadblocks and detours seem to constantly confront us in our daily journeys to the destination. So, what’s the trick to getting through the challenges and reaching the destination?
You may get dinged up along the way
While out running errands one recent snowy day I misjudged a curb and dinged up a rather costly wheel on our Audi A4. I’ve only owned the car about six months so I was a bit annoyed with myself. I kept going and checked out the damage at my next stop. It turned out to be superficial and while it bothered me I was able to finish my day’s journey which included several stops.
Had I let, what in hindsight, is a minor occurrence derail my day many tasks would not have been completed. The point being that you need to keep going when minor setbacks occur on your journey. Sure you may arrived a little dinged up, but if you ultimately get where you were planning to go you’ll be no worse for the wear.
The stories are in what doesn’t work
I find I start more blog posts based around minor setbacks than successes. Successes are easy to write about. We did what we planned, it all worked out. hooray for us. There’s not much to learn in that approach. Experience, after all, is learning from your mistakes. And I my friends have lots of experience. It might even be safe to say I was over zealous in my driving on the aforementioned day. I mean come on an Audi with Quattro all wheel drive technology should be invincible in snow right? Um, no – not so much.
Some of the dings and dents we pick up on the journey to the destination are of our own making. entrepreneurs by our very nature are impatient. We want it all and we want it now. Sometimes, however, slow and steady does win the race. It’s odd too because personally I’m not very good at slow and steady or at least that is how I view it. On the other hand, the biggest business successes I have been involved with have occurred over years, not days, weeks, or even months.
Focus on the destination but live the journey one day at a time, in the moment.
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