Do You Have a Strategic Lifestyle Plan?
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Free Download - Take What You Need and Leave the Rest By David Bohl |
Every business has, or should have, a strategic plan. It endows the business with the fundamentals from which to exist and grow.
In its simplest form, a strategic plan means realizing an organization's ultimate goals.
Strategic planning should not be mistaken for a business, or operational, plan. Strategic planning has enduring effects on a business, while business or operational decisions are short-term or day-to-day in nature.
Any strategic plan, or any plan for that matter, must be followed by real and sustained action to achieve its objectives.
Typically, a strategic plan consists of the following steps:
Analyze the environment,
Establish objectives,
Analyze specific circumstances,
Select alternative options and strategies,
Implement, monitor, and adapt the plan.
This is a proven, time-tested model of founding, managing, and growing a business.
Does this plan apply only to business? Absolutely not!
Let's look at individuals. Many people create their career plan and then adapt their lives to those plans. They then get all caught up in day-to-day operations of their jobs and their lives and lose sight of the big picture. That's why, often times, they find it difficult to discover a balance in their lives.
By conforming your life to your business or career, what you're really doing is expending massive amounts of time and energy managing your life. You've almost created another job or business (full- or part-time) for yourself.
What you wind up doing is constantly "finessing" your life to fit your job, and I'm not talking about the economics involved in the type of lifestyle that you're able to sustain with your career.
I'm referring to defining and creating a life and lifestyle in support of your values, beliefs, and goals - first, and then planning your career or business around that strategy.
I'm advocating developing a thoughtful design for your life - a strategic lifestyle plan - that delineates what you most want out of life.
How would this strategic lifestyle plan look given the typical 5-part business model? Let's have a look:
Analyze the environment - Look at what's going on in your life. Look at how you live - the external factors like how many hours you devote to work, family, friends, and yourself, and the internal factors like how well you think you're handling your life right now.
Establish objectives - What do you want out of life? Do some soul-searching here to determine your goals, desires, needs, values, and priorities.
Analyze specific circumstances - Look at your inherent (essential) values, extraneous (non-essential) values, and lifestyle (things you want in your life).
Select alternative options and strategies - Circumstances and needs (financial, career, family, friends, solitude, developmental, leisure, health, and spiritual) change over time, and at various stages of life. Be ready to flow with things and changes.
Implement, monitor, and adapt the plan - Take action and remain flexible. Live the life that you choose.
Living a life in support of your values and beliefs - implementing and taking action on your strategic lifestyle plan - will keep you focused on what's most important to you, thus allowing you to live the life that you choose , both personally and professionally.
Copyright 2007 David B. Bohl, Reflections Coaching, LLC. All rights reserved.
Do You Have a Strategic Lifestyle Plan - To learn more about this author, visit David Bohl's Website.
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David AchesonDavid Acheson is the founder of DCJA Consultancy. DCJA Consultancy is a management consultancy business specialising in B2B sales consultancy. They offer bespoke and packaged sales consultancy including Sales Optimisation Review, Interim Sales Management, Sales & Marketing Review, 1:1 Sales & Management Staff Analysis, Management Training, Solution Sales Training, Creation of New Pay Plan, KPI's, run Customer Feedback Campaigns, assist with Recruitment, Coaching, Appraisals and set up Strategic Marketing Campaigns. David spent his early career in accountancy and then moved into sales in 1982, working in Office Equipment, IT, Advertising, Training, Outsourcing and Consultancy. He has held many Senior Positions in SMBs and Global Organisations including Head of Sales Operations & Head of Business Development. His knowledge, skills and great experience of the Sales Industry has led to David making keynote speeches and running educational sessions to key businesses through organisations including The Chamber of Commerce and Business Link. - Visit David Acheson's Website |
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Michiel JonkerAs a Certified Information Systems Auditor, Michiel assists businesses in a professional capacity by evaluating the threats to their businesses. He acquired the necessary knowledge, skills, and techniques to minimize a business owner’s risk of business failure and to maximize his chances of high growth and success. He strongly believes that you CAN maximize your chances of business success, by implementing the business solution he has advocated for more than 12 years in your business plan and planning. Michiel has decided to share his experience with business owners by putting almost everything he knows in a business plan and survival guide (compiled in an e-book format) and written as a high growth SMB coaching course for SMB business owners, directors and managers - titled as the “Survival Kit for Small and Medium Businesses - Profit from your Business Risks!” According to Michiel, his goal was to add new techniques to a business owner’s business planning survival kit and instruct him or her in using these in the future - without any help from a consultant! For more information about the benefits of implementing profit protection planning in your business, please visit: http://www.business-around-the-globe.com - Visit Michiel Jonker's Website |
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Leanne Hoagland-SmithAre your sales where you want them to be? Will you be one of the few who achieves sales or business success or one of the many who have failed to change? Are you tired of being told you are like everyone else? Then you may find my first book on sales of interest. Be the Red Jacket in the Sea of Gray Suits, The Keys to Unlocking Sales available at Amazon or at http://www.processspecialist.com/red-jacket.htm. This book is a reflection of my no-nonsense approach to improving sales to overall business results. If you are truly committed to making sustainable changes, then I can help you secure a positive return on your investment because I focus on executable solutions not telling you the problems you already know you have. From training to corporate (group) coaching to executive one on one coaching, my approach is to assess, create awareness, build a goal driven action plan and then execute. The bottom line question is "Not do you or your employees know it, but do you or they want to do it?" Please call for a free strategy session at 219.759.5601. - Visit Leanne Hoagland-Smith's Website |
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