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You Can’t Afford Not to Plan

Guest post by: Kerri Salls

Article Overview: Everyone has heard of at least one time management tool to help focus on priorities, schedule tasks and events or delegate assignments. These all focus on today and this week’s tasks.

You Can’t Afford Not to Plan

Everyone has heard of at least one time management tool to help focus on priorities, schedule tasks and events or delegate assignments. These all focus on today and this week’s tasks.

At one of my workshops recently, I warned new and would-be solo entrepreneurs that they need to take time to plan their work and work their plan on a larger scale. I said that once a year every business owner must revisit their three-year plan for the business. To do this, I recommend a scheduled three-day retreat. Some said it was impossible to do. Some thought it was unrealistic. Some wanted an alternative to three-days away. It’s not a rule. I recommend it because of its proven effectiveness in helping you grow your business exponentially.

A business retreat is not a vacation. It is an opportunity to break away from routine, remove yourself from day-to-day operations – including your phone, cell phone and email – to focus exclusively on your business and where you envision it will be in three years.

When you take your business retreat, it is best to get away from home and office. Some people think best out in nature at a mountain cottage. Others relax and focus by a lake or the ocean. Other people do best when they hole up at a great hotel. The location should provide the ambience conducive to intense concentration without too many distracting temptations.

What could take three days?

The first day, it’s hard to settle in to the job of working on the business. We are so accustomed to all the interruptions in our business, that uninterrupted time to concentrate is unfamiliar, almost uncomfortable. You’ll spend lots of time writing lists: who you forgot to call, who you still need to send email, tasks left undone, tasks to assign, tasks to be done as soon as you return. All these lists are necessary and not a waste of time because they help you empty your head of all the day-to-day pieces that normally consume your work life. Only then, can you start looking at where you want to go in the next three years at a strategic level.

There is a plan to your retreat to get the most impact.

Part I includes:

Review your vision statement – refine it/update it if necessary

Review/refine your business mission statement

Review/refine your personal mission statement

Develop your three year goals aligned with your vision and mission – if you have your plan from last year – it’s just updating it for one more year out

Part II is reverse-engineering that 3 year plan to what you will do next year. Twenty-five years ago you would have put into a PERT chart the chain of events leading to your desired results. You can do it on paper or in any number of online tools that help with the process.

Part III is making that one year plan real by putting dates on tasks/events/activities/projects. Then the fun begins. The fun part is taking a one year wall calendar and marking it up with these plans and activities to become your schedule of how to get it done.

Does this sound simplistic? On the surface it is very simple. Yet how many business owners follow- through and actually do it? Will you?

I only know a handful of professionals who take time to do this. Most business owners and entrepreneurs find excuses not to and bemoan that they aren’t getting anywhere with their business.

Bill Gates of Microsoft is an example of a major business leader who takes a solo retreat annually to write/rewrite his strategic plan for himself and the business. If you have watched Microsoft over the years, you catch glimpses of Gates plan and his vision whenever he announces a new decision. It all comes from his annual retreat.

If big corporations and prominent leaders can commit to a working retreat each year, why not your business too? If they can value the time away to plan strategically how they will improve their ROI (return on investment), why not give it a try? You just can’t afford not to plan.

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Article Tags: business retreat, planning, planning process, strategic plan, strategic planning, time management



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