Perhaps you have seen the television commercial that talks about a family as if it is a Fortune 500 company listed on a stock exchange. For people who take their personal and professional success seriously, that commercial is spot on. Just as a Fortune 500 company benefits from an annual strategic plan, we can benefit from one, too.
So what is in an annual strategic plan, and why is it important? Here are the key elements of a strategic plan. These are as applicable to our personal life as they are to our professional life.
Goals Scorecard:What goals did we set for the year just past? Did we accomplish those goals? What was the financial impact of reaching or not reaching those goals?
Organizational Evaluation:Now that we have evaluated how we did against last year's goals (or if we had any goals for last year), we need to evaluate our organization (and our personal life) to set goal categories and priorities for the coming year. We can benefit from this exercise even if we are an organization of one. Areas to examine include the efficiency and effectiveness of business operations, people relationships/management, sales and marketing, profitability, and time management.
Core Values and Principles:The core values and principles by which we conduct our business and our personal life provide a compass that steers us clear of pitfalls that can undermine our long term success. As part of our annual strategic plan, we will benefit from reviewing and articulating our guiding values and principles, and ensuring that our daily activities and personal behaviors are consistent with those values and principles.
Purpose and Vision:Purpose is knowing why we do what we do. Vision is a compelling picture of where we are going; a description of what we are in the process of becoming. Vision provides a clear roadmap upon which we structure our goals, our strategies, and our tactics. Organizations and individuals both benefit from a vision statement that keeps them moving in the right direction.
Critical Goal Categories:A critical goal category is an area of our business (or our personal life) that we want to develop. Vision states where we are going; a critical goal category states what we will work on to get there. Experts say that we should work on three to four critical goal categories; if we have more than that, we get spread too thin and risk not accomplishing anything.
Goals: Goals provide clarity about what we will do to achieve our vision. A good goal statement is WHY SMART: Written, Harmonious (with our other goals, and with our values, principle, purpose, and vision), Yours (important to you), Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant (to our vision), and Time-bound.
Action Steps:Action steps are the specific things that must be done to achieve the goal. Action steps must answer the questions what, where, when, who, and how. Our purpose and vision answer the question why.
With our strategic plan complete, we now have the opportunity to live every day on purpose. However, we don't want to make the mistake many businesses make. The strategic plan should not sit on the shelf collecting dust. Our strategic plan needs to be revisited regularly, so that we can ensure that we are creating daily the life we want to lead. As we complete our action steps and achieve our goals, we should log those results in our strategic plan and celebrate our successes. If some unseen obstacles get in our way, we need to revisit our goals and action steps and revise as necessary, using the compass of our purpose and vision to guide us in the right direction.
