Not only is February the hardest month to spell of the year but financially the most difficult for small businesses. Having survived December and January, February is the month that the bills arrive and have that negative affect on cash flow.

Learning how to plan around these and other obvious obstacles in business is important; planning for the unplanable is critical. In any business plan, a plan within a plan should be allowed to take care of those issues that crop up when least expected. Break in, machine down time, vehicle breakdown, flood, storm damage, staff absenteeism. The list goes on. A wise business owner will always have a strategy to cater for these sorts of issues.

Take a moment today to build a list of the worst possible situations you could face as a business and then work through them and develop a ‘disaster recovery’ plan for each. It could just save your business.

Today, I will be joined by Robin Buck from Fitness Boot Camp on Radio CCFm as we discuss planning and goal setting for the new year. Here is the heads up on the discussion so you can either follow along or if you miss the broadcast you can take these notes and begin the process on your own.

Why set goals?

Setting of goals has to be the number one tool to get movement in a person or organization’s life. Just the activity of writing down a list of things to do or buy goes a long way to achieving results.

Clearing out the old

Clearing out the old year is the first step in setting new goals. We too often drag unnecessary issues around with us. We need to start this exercise with a reality check. Make a list of all the outstanding activities for both yourself and your business. Then review this list and cross off anything that is out dated and not relevant.

Top down planning

Before we go on to making new goals we need to look at the top down process of planning. From our Vision statement for the business we need to list around seven different strategic focus points that will help us move closer to this vision. Now transfer all the left over activities from this year to the new list under each of these strategies. Add any more activities you feel need to be on the list under each heading.

Converting activities into goals

Converting a list of activities into goals is as simple as adding three additional columns. Add a due date for each item. Then add the person who will be responsible for getting this activity done and another person’s name of someone who will ensure that this activity is done.

You now have a list of goals for the future.

Ok, so you have heard this all before but check this out. A picture says a thousand words. Thanks Robin for the great post.