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.
Like this article? Share it with your friends
|
|
David Bohl
(Visit David's Website)
David B. Bohl has been on a truly unique
journey. Prior to launching his coaching
practice, David gained his life’s
experience and knowledge as an
entrepreneur, business owner, venture
capital investor, and philanthropic
patron, as well as from the hierarchical
world of a global investment bank.
Upon "succeeding" at each stage in his
professional life, David slowly began to
realize that a change was in order. It
seemed that instead of reveling in the
joys of life, he, like most of us, had
bought into a seemingly impossible mandate
- a relentless strive to get further in
life at almost any cost. He divested
himself of all of his business holdings
and began his pursuit of a more enjoyable
and rewarding life. In time, David
established REFLECTIONS Coaching LLC,
where he now serves as a personal coach,
lifestyle mentor, educator, and author.
To learn more about this step-by-step
strategy for Living YOUR Life YOUR way,
and to sign up for his 9 FREE Tips for
Finding Happiness in a Fast-Paced World,
free teleseminars, free Special Report,
free bi-monthly ezine and more, go to: www.Sl
owDownFAST.com
|
|
 |
|
|
David Bohl's
Complete
List Of
Work-Life
Articles
|
|
|
If you enjoyed this article, get David Bohl's Complete List of Work-Life Articles For FREE!
|
| |
|
|
|
![[Get Copyright Permissions]](http://license.icopyright.net/images/icopy-w.gif){kind=small}
