Monday, January 3, 2011

Business New Year’s Resolutions

It’s a new year. A new quarter. A new month. And you have enthusiastically thought about how you will make this new time so much better for your company and for you personally. You have a clean slate upon which to write. Well, as they said in that car rental commercial, “Not exactly”. There are a number of carryovers from last year, quarter and month, right?

In fact, it is the carryovers and habits set before that are the major causes of new resolutions and plans not being put in motion or carried out.

Unfortunately, the thoughts are just in your head and unless they are written down in the form of a plan and shared with your organization, the chance of them actually happening is virtually zero.

There must be a concrete change in order to alter the course of events. If you keep on doing the same things, you will keep on getting the same results. It’s not just the definition of insanity; it is what happens to most businesses.

The most effective change is the creation of an updated strategic plan. It can be a plan created from scratch or one that is updated and modified to take into account the current business and industry environment. The Institute for Strategic Planning has found that 73% of companies do not have a written plan that is known throughout the company. No wonder that business continues as it always has.

This is the moment to invest the resources and time to put those new thoughts down in a plan and capitalize on the opportunities in front of you. Many see this as tedious and unproductive effort. Yes, it can be if not done properly or the plan is not acted upon. It needs to have assigned responsibility with measures that cause accountability and retooling of the plans based on in market responses.

Have you done this with your company yet? If not, what is stopping you? You don’t have to be the CEO, although that clearly would help. You can put this into action at any level and your success will attract others to you.

If you need a format, we have a simple one that has proven to work effectively across a broad range of industries. If you need help using it or whatever other format you choose, please contact us. We are experts at this type of work.

Just get started before the slate fills up with old carryovers.

Thanks.

John

John Maver
President
Maver Management Group
(925) 648-7561
Maver Management
View John Maver's profile on LinkedIn

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