Planning

Planning

Planning is critical to business success.

If you fail to plan, you plan to fail.

Business owners should spend time regularly planning, this includes:

1. You Vision, Mission and Values
2. Goal Setting
3. Establishing your company culture
4. Priority Management

The videos below have some incredible training in relation to many areas of planning, from many of Australia’s leading xperts.

Vision, Mission & Values

One of the most critical things any business owner should do is ensure they have a vision, mission and set of core values for their business.

In small business, it is fairly common for the business owner to not invest the time establishing a vision, a mission and core values. This is generally because this is seen as something large corporate businesses do. However, one of the single most defining aspects of successful businesses is their clarity around their vision, their mission and set of core values. Those businesses with a clearly defined vision, mission and values remained focussed and are ultimately more successful.

“Good business leaders create a vision, articulate the vision, passionately own the vision, and relentlessly drive it to completion.”

~ Jack Welsh

An organisation needs a vision and a mission to create a playing field for the team members. The vision sets forth what we stand for and the mission is how we are going to get there. The VALUES of the business are the sidelines and quite literally the goal posts show us where to aim. Our values are the guidelines for all our plans, decisions & actions.

As a player on the field for the ae team, we need to make sure all our plans, decisions and actions are guided by our values.

As a newly appointed general manager of a large business in my early twenties, one of the first decisions I made was to identify a vision, mission and set of core values for the business. Even though the business had been operating for over fifteen years, the owners and former managers had never seen it necessary to establish these. The business had been very successful prior to the vision, mission and values being established, however, as a company with over one hundred employees, all parts of the machine were not moving in the same direction, and as consequently, results were impacted by this.

As a business owner and a leader, one of the most important things you will do is establish your vision, mission and values, and there is no better way to do this than with your team. As general manager back in my previous position, i did this, as well as twice in my own business.

There is definitely a significant benefit of establishing your vision, mission and values with your team, however, there is definitely a knack to getting the right result as well. Ultimately, the vision, mission and values are for your business. team members will come and go, but you won’t and your vision, mission and values must stand the test of time. Therefore, you need to lead your team in establishing them, but get the buy-in of the team in establishing them – this is a delicate and finely orchestrated process. The values must represent who you are, and what you want for your business. They must also represent the people you have in your team, as these people are an extension of you and represent you.

In the three times that I have established the vision, mission and core values for my businesses, I have been very clear on what I wanted prior to involving my team. It is important to spend time on developing the basis of your vision, mission and values.

Once you are clear on your own vision, mission and values, organise to spend some time with your team to establish them, getting the buy-in of the team.

Each time we have done this, we have spent anywhere from one to three days with our executive team. Not only is it a critical process for the establishment of the vision, mission and value, but a great team development and bonding experience.

Goal Setting

“He that rises late must trot all day.“ – Benjamin Franklin

Time is the great equaliser. It doesn’t matter whether you are rich, poor, smart, dumb, at the top levels of an organisation, at the bottom, your own boss or employed. Everyone shares the same twenty-four hours in a day. How is it then, that some people are able to achieve so much, and some so little. How is it that they know which tasks to tackle and which to leave?

I have many businesses, hundreds of employees, receive hundreds of emails, dozens of phone calls and have many other interruptions EVERY DAY. How do I stay sane? How do I remain at my most productive and keep focussed?

To be successful in your day, week, month, year and life, you need to master your time. Of course, we all know that time is the one constant in life we can rely on.

“If you want to make good use of your time, you’ve got to know what’s most important and then give it all you’ve got.“

— Lee Iacocca

Planning is pivotal to a successful day, week, month, year and life.

How do you plan?

The key to planning is identifying your most important goals. It is important to establish your annual goals, then work down to your quarterly, monthly, weekly and daily goals.

Planning should be done as follows:

• Plan for 10 minutes for every day First thing in the morning
• Plan for 30 minutes for every week Last thing Friday afternoon
• Plan for 1 hour for every month In the last few days of the month
• Plan for 1 day for every quarter In the last week of the quarter
• Plan for 2 Days for every year In December
• Plan for 1 Day for every year to review your life goals

Annual Goals – these are chunked up big goals. Think about what the three key milestones and achievements you want to achieve and write these down. Annual planning is about identifying the key drivers for your year. With your annual goals, less is more. In other words, keep your goals to your top key ones. What is it that you really need to achieve this year?

Quarterly Goals – similar to the annual goals, these are also the large chunked up goals, although they need to be in line with the annual goals. Like you annual goals, they are the key drivers for your quarter, flowing from the annual goals.

Monthly Goals – what are your quarterly goals? Break these up into what you can do this moth to achieve those quarterly goals.

Weekly Goals – as per monthly goals, you need to identify what all the goals are that will help you achieve your monthly goals.

Daily Goals – these are basically your list of tasks each day that will help you achieve your weekly goals. You will have tasks that have nothing to do with your goals each day as well. Make a decision if they need to be done by you, by someone else, or not at all. If they are essential to complete by you, make sure they are allocated AFTER your big rock goals. The non-goal related tasks are the sand that need to be added last.

Trust me on this, if you simply take care of today, tomorrow will take care of itself.

So, first of all, and most important, look at your day today. Spend 10-15 minutes deciding what the most important (and often avoided) tasks are. These are your big goals for today. Then put in the tasks that ideally need to be done today, next followed by the ones that can be left over to tomorrow (and the next day…and the next day…if necessary).

Once you have done your planning for today, go to your diary and allocate dates and times for the following:

• Daily – 10 minutes at the beginning of each day
• Weekly – 30 minutes at the end of each week (for the next week)
• Monthly – 1 hour at the end of each month (for the following month)
• Quarterly – 1 Hour each quarter
• Annually – 2 days towards the end of each year

You don’t need to have everything planned to start planning! Just start today, with today, and tomorrow will take care of itself.

There are a bunch of awesome planning, goal setting and organisational apps available (many for free). Check out one of my latest blogs on technology www.b-x.com.au/blog

Priority Management

Time management is an impossibility, you cannot change time, turn back time, find time, create more time or speed it up. They key therefore, to have the illusion of having more time, one needs to be as efficient and effective as possible, with a crystal clear clarity on priorities.

There are three key steps to priority management:

 

1. Have clearly defined priorities

The first step to priority management is knowing what is required of you, and applying priority to the most important and  HIGHEST VALUE items.

Start by creating a list of everything you need to do. You most likely have this list already. You will need to ensure you have items on this list such as:

• your daily ‘to do’ list
• your big goals
• projects you are working on
• miscellaneous items that come up day to day

When you have created your list, go through each item and apply the Priority Matrix.

Like anything, your tasks require a system to manage. A system that works like clockwork, and does not require energy and thought (or very little thought) to manage. It starts by understanding the Priority matrix.

Quadrant 1 – This is Urgent & Important tasks, in other words – do it NOW.

Quadrant 2 – This is Important, but not urgent. These you can decide when to do it.

Quadrant 3 – These are urgent, but not important. You can delegate this to someone else.

Quadrant 4 – These are not important and not urgent. These can likely be dumped.

Work through your list and for each item, decide:

1. Whether to do it now – Put a ‘1’ next to this.
2. Whether it can be assigned to a date in the future. It is important to do, has a value when completed, but is not urgent. Put a number ‘2’ next to this AND set a START and a COMPLETION date.
3. If an item is urgent but not important, you should DELEGATE the task. Put a number ‘3’ next to this and write the initials of the person you will delegate this to. You should delegate EVERYTHING that can be done to at least 80% or better of your ability.
4. If the task has no importance or urgency, you should dump it. Do not waste any time with tasks that return no results and are not of high value to you and your company’s vision and mission.

 

2. Work smarter not harder

The second step to priority management is all about working smarter, not harder. At a macro level, we can have an immediate impact on the following key areas – handling email and minimising time spent in email, embracing technology to aid our efficiency and effectiveness, and outsourcing where possible to reduce the low importance, repetitive and administrative tasks, so we can focus on the high return tasks.

Email:

• This is a quick communication tool. It is not designed to rule your day.
• Check it maximum two to three times per day – have scheduled times where you check it.
• Don’t let your inbox be your to-do list. Don’t action items from your inbox, create a task instead.
• Create rules/ filters to file/ archive messages that clutter your inbox
• All actionable items in an email should be created as a task.

Embrace the Technology. Technology should increase your productivity, not take up your time.

There are some incredible apps available to use which will CHANGE YOUR LIFE!

Task Management – There are heaps of options for managing your tasks. Without a doubt, the hands-down best app I have seen and used for managing your tasks is…Asana. This has revolutionised our workplace and team communication. And even better at a base level it’s free. There are other great ones, such as Podio and Evernote, however, we have had great success out of Asana.

Irrespective of which app you choose to manage your tasks, the most important point here, is that YOU manage your tasks!

We use the Priority Matrix when handling all emails. As mentioned previously, we only review our inbox twice a day in scheduled times. When we do, we work through the emails, and do the following:

1. Skim read
2. categorise as Quadrant 1, 2, 3, or 4.
3. If a Q1, we may do it straight away, or allocate to do today.
4. If a Q2, we will move it to our tasks and DATE ACTIVATE it. This means, we decide WHEN we will do it and allocate this in our task list.
5. If a Q3, we simply archive it.
6. If a Q4, we task assign it straight to someone else, straight from the inbox and archive the email.

It should take less about 10-30 seconds to handle each email. Therefore, if you have 50 emails in your inbox, it shouldn’t take you more than about 10-15 minutes to totally clear your inbox.

We have a great training video on using Gmail, called Inbox Zero. If you would like to do the training video, please follow the link below:

Once all your emails are cleared from your inbox, you should be using your task management system to then control your work day. You can then start work on your tasks for today (that you date assigned for today), and remain completely focussed on the tasks that are important.

Outsource – many people think that outsourcing is expensive, but if you know where to go it really isn’t. Here are some options for outsourcing and an idea of what this may cost:

• Bookkeeping – you may do all your accounts, or have people that do this in-house, but can some of it, or all of it be outsourced? The answer is probably yes. One of my businesses has been providing an outsourcing solution for all your bookkeeping needs, and provides bookkeeping solutions from around $100 per week. You can also check out Odesk, bookkeepers on Odesk usually work on an hourly rate of about $6-$15 per hour (depending on experience).
• Graphic Design – there are thousands of graphic designers on Odesk. Don’t pay a fortune, when you don’t have to. If you have a good idea of what you need, artwork can cost you from as little as $20!
• Data Entry – We get all our admin/ data entry work done for many of our businesses through Odesk. It’s not only cost effective, but is done professionally and quickly.
• Rostering & Payroll – one of my businesses is an online rostering and payroll
• company, we serve thousands of clients, who opt for a no-fuss, cloud based solution for their rostering & payroll for their businesses. What used to take them days a week, is approved in minutes and actually saves them money.
• Personal Assistants – one of the best things an entrepreneur or business owner can do is have someone manage their email. There are many options with outsourcing this, from using someone on Odesk, or using an affiliate company in Australia, such as Ms Virtual Assistant or Think To Act.

3. Apply laser sharp focus

Have you ever been at work the day before you were going on holidays and were surprised by the amount you achieved during the day, how productive you were? It always surprised me how much I was able to achieve!

This is called focus. When we need to be, we can be 100% focussed, such as when we are going on holidays, but the questions is, how do we bottle this focus and use it every day.

Focus is 100% about our mindset. It’s all about our ability to absorb ourselves in something, with the pressure of knowing that we have to achieve this today. It makes us efficient, effective and 100% switched on.

Here are five keys to help you achieve your focus, they are:

1. Clear your head

• Achieve mental quiet
• Forget everything, focus on today

2. Clear the room

• Be in a quiet place
• Put headphones on if necessary (even if they are not turned on!) People will assume you are busy and will not interrupt you.
• Move away from distractions

3. Master your time

• John Maxwell says, we exaggerate yesterday (we think it was far better than it actually was), we overestimate tomorrow (we think we can achieve far more tomorrow than what is really possible) and we underestimate today (we don’t realise the significance or the possibilities that today holds for us).
• Today is the only time you have. It’s too late for yesterday. And you can’t depend on tomorrow.
• Have a list – prioritise it
• Begin with the end in mind
• First things first
• Stay on task – no multi-tasking

4. Master your tech

• Asana tasks – the best Task management tool
• Turn off your phone if you can
• Get rid of beeps, dings and notifications

5. Reward yourself

• Set the milestones
• Reward yourself, AFTER you have achieved the milestones
• Make it a rule not to get up or be distracted until you reach a milestone.

Too often we spend all our time with the little things, instead of the things that really matter.Start with the end in mind, hit the high reward items first, and worry about the ‘clutter’ and low return items, if and when you have time.

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Successful people are the masters of knowing what they need to do and allocating when and who to do it. Planning is the foundation of this.