Category Archives: Strategic Planning

When your To-Do List fails…

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One task topped the list of all my prioPrioritiesrities yesterday — I planned to write this blog post.

That didn’t happen.  (I bet you’ve had days like this too!)

This is what yesterday looked like instead:

 

  • A consulting client had an issue that needed immediate attention.
  • My son needed me to drive him to a medical appointment (no worries, he’s fine now).
  • I received a call from a conference planner who wanted to see if I would be a good fit for their keynote speaker.

So there went my day, and my blog didn’t get written, even though it was #1 on my priority list.

I used to feel stressed and guilty when things like this happened, but not anymore.

I’m a huge believer in planning and prioritizing. I preach and teach the value and necessity of strategic planning. I walk the talk about starting every week with a To-Do List that includes my Top Five Priorities, and my Top One of Five (meaning, no matter what fails, this One Thing must get accomplished).

Yet should I have said “No” to all three unexpected requests because I knew that this blog post was my #1 priority?

Of course not. And neither should you. Because in Real Life, some things are more important than others (no matter what we have written on our To-Do lists!).

Let’s get clear about priorities and lists

Your priorities are guidelines that determine where you spend your energy, your time and your money. I think businesses function best – and we feel less stress — when we are disciplined about three well thought out priority lists.

1)      Annual Key Initiatives (relatively static, these shift and change only when you make strategy changes)

Your annual key initiatives define your primary focus – your foremost strategic plans, projects, and ideas you believe will move your company forward. Think of them like energy buckets – they define where you spend your energy, and include things like:

  • Achieve more visibility in a target market
  • Create efficiencies through structure and systems
  • Improve cash reserves (or improve cash flow, or build more equity)
  • Develop employees’ skills and capabilities
  • Upgrade technology

2)      Weekly To-Do List (these are transient priorities that move you toward your Key Initiatives)

Your Weekly To-Do list is task oriented and each task should move you forward so you can accomplish your Key Initiatives. It’s very dynamic, changing weekly, daily, even hourly. Things get written down, accomplished and scratched off (I love that!). Things like:

  • Write a press release
  • Email a proposal to a prospect
  • Write a new job description
  • Follow up on accounts receivable
  • Order new business cards

What’s missing?

Now you’re clear on your Annual Key Initiatives, and you’ve made your Weekly To-Do List. But here’s what gets left out of all this idealistic planning: Real-life Priorities.

Your real-life priorities are what matter most, regardless of the best-laid plans.

3)      Real-life Priorities (these come first…no matter what else happens)

Knowing your Real-life Priorities helps you make those difficult decisions about where to invest your energy, time and money (not to mention your heart) when life doesn’t go as planned.

Deciding what comes first, no matter what, can save you tons of stress and keep you from becoming immobilized when there simply aren’t enough hours in the day. Most important, knowing what’s important keeps you from feeling guilty when there’s simply not enough of you to go around.

Here’s a short list of my Real-life Priorities:

  • Family and friends in distress
  • Current client needs
  • High value opportunities
  • Cash management

Your short list might look different.  But I know we’ll agree that there are certain things for each of us that simply can’t be ignored, no matter what our strategic plan and key initiatives are.

I think of my Real-life Priorities like a disaster plan. I live in what’s known as “tornado alley” – so most of us here have a simple plan for what do to, where to go, who to call and what to grab when the weatherman says “Take shelter NOW!”

The plan is already in place and I don’t have to think about it. Having a plan always reduces stress. And that’s what clarifying your Real-life Priorities can do for you.

Life still happens

Yes, we have a Strategic Plan. Yes, we know our Annual Key Initiatives. Yes, we have a Weekly To-Do List, with the top five priorities listed front and center.

And yet, life still happens. Family members need you. Technology and equipment fails. Great opportunities pop up.

So when your To-Do List fails, take comfort in knowing you can rely on your Real-life Priorities to get you through with a minimum amount of stress and guilt.

When Your To-Do List Fails…
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Take care,

Darcie Harris

 

 

P.S. Scientific fact: deciding priorities takes up lots of brain space! When you’re ready to decide your Real-Life Priorities, do it first thing in the morning, before you’ve taxed your brain. You’ll be glad you did!

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What my grand-dog Sammi taught me about strategic planning

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Strategic PlanningMy grand-dog Sammi, a happy black Lab, loved to greet me at the door when I came home.  She also loved carrying around sticks in her mouth.

One day, a heavy wind blessed her with plenty of long tree limbs to choose from.  That evening, when she saw me open the door, she rushed up to greet me – limb and all.

Her tail was wagging, her eyes were bright and she couldn’t wait to get her neck scratched.

Unfortunately, the limb she had in her mouth was so long that she couldn’t fit through the door.

I could see the dilemma on her face — the tough choice of knowing that she’d have to drop her precious stick to get through the door and get her neck scratched.

That’s what it’s like for most of us, knowing that we can get more of what we really want, but we’ll have to let go of something else to get there. 

We have to face that reality:  everything isn’t equally worth doing.  For Sammi, getting her neck scratched trumped carrying around the stick.  (I was pretty happy about that!)

The time comes, as a business owner or leader, when we have to take a deep breath and let go.

We have to train others to take over tasks, responsibilities and authority for things we’ve done well.  We have to learn to trust that others will do them just as well, hopefully even better.

Easier Said Than Done

If you’ve reached that turning point, putting together a strategic plan can help you make that transition.

Here are a few clues that time may have come.  Are you:

  • Feeling overwhelmed?
  • Going in too many directions?
  • Unclear about your priorities?
  • Don’t know what to do next (or first!)?
  • Trying to accomplish big dreams with a shoestring budget?
  • Unable to achieve the results you really want?
  • Unprepared to capitalize on all the opportunities you see?

It’s a proven fact that creating (and using!) a strategic plan will help you master those challenges.  You’ll

  • Gain clarity
  • Get focused
  • Decide priorities (including what to STOP doing!)
  • Achieve better results
  • Inspire the full engagement of your team

 Don’t let Strategic Planning Scare You

 It’s not rocket science, I promise!  Strategic planning is a step by step process of:

  • Painting a picture of your desired future
  • Choosing the ideas you believe will give you an advantage
  • Deciding what is worth doing
  • Knowing exactly what you want people to do
  • Choosing how to do it in the best way
  • Using your resources wisely
  • Making better decisions

Simply put, strategic planning takes you from being reactive to the “crisis of the day” to focusing on the future and becoming proactive.

The Reality of Cost

I know that sometimes the expense of hiring a consultant to facilitate strategic planning keeps small business owners from taking action.

That’s why I’ve designed an affordable and convenient way to accomplish strategic planning.

Strategic Planning Made Simple A one-hour e-course, complete with three planning templates

(to help you organize your goals, your priorities and know who is accountable for what).

The benefits of strategic planning are remarkable!  You’ll learn how to:

  • Define a clear vision, understood and embraced by all employees
  • Set clear goals
  • Focus on your priorities (daily decisions become easier then!)
  • Prevent wasting precious time and money
  • Focus on what differentiates you from your competition
  • Energize and inspire your employees to deliver their very best effort
  • Define what people are accountable for (not just tasks – results!)
  • Turn strategic plans into action plans

Breathe New Life Into Your Business

Is it time to “drop the stick” you are holding and embrace the reality that everything isn’t equally worth doing?

Learn how to do a strategic plan and your life will become more focused, more organized and you’ll achieve better results. 

So join us:

Strategic Planning Made Simple

Thursday, March 27th

12:00 p.m. to 1:00 p.m. (Central Time)

The course is just $199, and it’s yours for life.  View it as often as you like and download fresh templates whenever you need.

You have my word that the benefits will last you a lifetime!

 Take care,

Darcie Harris

 

 

P.S.  As with all my training, I want you to be completely satisfied.  That’s why I promise a money-back guarantee if you’re not.  No hassles, no risk!

Maybe Oprah & I disagree about planning

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PlanningI know a woman who left a lucrative (though unrewarding) job and moved to another city to pursue her dream of opening her own business. 

After a particularly bad day at the office, and one more frustrating episode with a miserable boss, she ducked out early, drove home, dropped down on the sofa and turned on Oprah. 

During that show, Oprah said the magic words: “Do what you love and the money will follow.”

The woman quit her job the next day. On hope alone, within a month, she sold her home, moved and opened her business.

Trouble is, the money didn’t follow.

I know a lot of women entrepreneurs who do what they love, and the money hasn’t followed.

At the risk of getting on Oprah’s bad side, I think there’s a lot more to running a successful business than, “Do what you love and the money will follow.”

So what’s the answer?  It’s not magic and it’s not complicated.  You absolutely, positively, unequivocally must have a plan.

 Time after time, research has proved that entrepreneurs who engage in strategic planning are more profitable and more successful than those who do not.

One simple thing stops most women entrepreneurs from creating a strategic plan:  they don’t know how. 

That’s exactly why I created my new e-course.

Strategic Planning Made Simple

It’s not magic.  It’s common sense, step by step instructions on:

  • Who should participate
  • When to plan and how often
  • What questions to ask and answer
  • How to define and measure goals
  • What to track and measure
  • How to use your plan to get better results

And there’s more!  You’ll get three easy-to-use planning templates.  Half the work is done for you!  (Okay, I’m exaggerating…not half — but the templates DO save you hours of time and energy.)

Strategic planning has so many benefits that entire books are written on the subject.  Here are the top three:  

  1. you’ll take control of your future
  2. you’ll identify and prioritize opportunities
  3. you’ll make better decisions about how to spend your time and money

Please don’t be like the women who, on hope alone, risked her financial security with no planning and believed the money would magically follow.

Start today to turn your dreams into reality with a PLAN.  (The secret?  Break your dream into bite-size pieces.)

Check it out today, just click, “Tell me more…”

  Tell me more

Stop struggling and start planning!

Take care,
Darcie

P.S. Can you tell I’m excited about helping you turn your dreams into reality?  In fact, I’m so determined that if you sign up TODAY I’ll give you a FREE 45-minute coaching session! 

Get unstuck so your business can grow

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Frustrated woman entrepreneurSo far this week I’ve met with two women entrepreneurs who are consulting clients and they both have the same problem.

They want their business to grow and they’re stuck.  They work hard – both of them are putting in 60+ hours a week.

They are so busy with day-to-day tasks and responsibilities, that just getting through their weekly “To Do” list or fighting fires consumes all their time and energy and then some.

More time won’t solve their problem.

Their businesses are too dependent on them. 

Is your business too dependent on you?  Until you start to break this dependence, your growth will be limited.  (And you may be overworked!)

Here’s the good news:  learning one important (and overlooked!) concept will help you break this dependence.

What’s that concept?  Some functions make your business successful short term and some functions will make it successful long term.  You, as the owner, need to focus on the functions that will make your business healthy, effective and efficient long term.

Turning over the short-term functions will make your business less dependent on you.  Because short-term needs crowd out long-term needs every time.

If we neglect the things that move the company forward long term, we stay stuck in the endless loop of trying to keep up with daily tasks that someone else could do.

Here’s an example of the functions that make your business successful in the short-term:

  • Accounting, payroll and benefits administration
  • Administration (systems, procedures, policies)
  • Sales (bet that surprised you!)
  • Operations

Here’s an example of the functions that will make your business successful in the long-term:

  • Staff development, training & teamwork
  • Strategic planning
  • Marketing (anticipating the market & future customer needs; innovation)
  • Finance

That list of long-term functions is where you as the leader should be spending most of your time.  To begin to break the company’s dependence on you, start with staff development and training.

Now that you know this, it’s time to make a plan to delegate or outsource everything you possibly can from the short-term list.  (I can hear you groaning!)

  • “My employees don’t know how to do these things as well as I do.”  You’re right, they probably don’t.  Your job is to teach them.
  • “No one here understands these procedures like I do.”  Right again, the processes and procedures are likely all in your head.
  • “I can’t afford to hire someone or outsource.”  I understand.  You’ll have to get creative and think about how to create new revenue with the time you free up.

Let me assure you, these thoughts are all completely normal!

You won’t get there overnight.  But picture your company a year from now and imagine how different it can look.

Start small.  Choose one thing and work toward letting it go.

Think about all the knowledge and information you are carrying around in your head!  Once you free up some of that mental space and you can focus on how to create new revenue.

Begin right now to document processes and procedures.

Just start.  You don’t have to create an entire Procedures Manual in one sitting.  Commit to documenting one process every week.  Get things out of your head and write them down.

The famous management consultant W. Edward Demming (he’s the guy who saved the Japanese auto industry after WWII) says it this way:  “If you can’t describe what you are doing as a process, you don’t know what you’re doing.”

Strong words, I know.  But though we may not be aware we have a “process” behind what we do and the decisions we make, we actually do.  It just comes so naturally to us that it’s hard to define.

But you can!  Break down your own thinking process and write it down.

Take the time to train others, not just what to do, but why, and how to make decisions.  Commit to teaching one employee something new each week.  Teach them what you do, how you do it, why you do it, what factors you consider when you make your decisions.  Teach them to think.

Now that you have the awareness, you’ll see your business through different eyes.  Separating long and short-term functions is your first step toward making your business less dependent on you.

Then you can grow! (Or chill out on a beach somewhere!  Send me a postcard.)

 

“Half my marketing dollars are wasted – I just don’t know which half”

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220px-John_WanamakerThis handsome gentleman is John Wanamaker, the man often cited as the source of that famous quote above.

Did you know he was an incredibly successful Philadelphia merchant in the late 1800’s? 

I take strange comfort in knowing that marketing strategies have stumped business owners for hundreds of years. 

John Wanamaker was known as modest, honest and the innovator of the “money back guarantee.”  He was also known as a merchandising and advertising genius. 

So if John Wanamaker was confused – before the options of television, the internet, mobile devices and social media were thrown into the mix — it’s no surprise that business owners today are seriously confounded!

Do you know which half of your marketing dollars are wasted?

The massive amount of choices you have about how to spend your marketing money and time mean one thing:  you absolutely need a marketing plan.

You have to be relentlessly strategic, or you’ll go broke just throwing money at marketing.

Creating a well-defined marketing plan will help you generate more leads and increase your sales.  You’ll accomplish these three critical benefits:

1)      Make better decisions about where to spend marketing time and money

2)      Save marketing dollars by spending them on what works

3)      Keep you focused and consistent, instead of “hit and miss”

Now is the perfect time to create your marketing plan for 2014. 

We’ve made it easy for you.  Our e-course “Become a Marketing Superstar:  How to Create a Marketing Plan Guaranteed to Increase Sales” comes complete with a 12-page customizable marketing plan template!

So don’t wait!  Be strategic and prepared to make 2014 your best year ever.

get the details here

 

Take care,

Darcie

 

P.S.  And…like John Wanamaker, we’ll offer you a money-back guarantee!

Small Changes with Big Impact

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It’s a typical Monday morning.  globe compass, compressed

You hit the ground running, armed with good intentions.  You tell yourself, this week is going to be different.  Better.

This week I’m going to get more accomplished.

This week I’ll get organized.

This week I’m going to get caught up.

But you’re crazy busy.

You open your email and you get sucked down a rabbit hole.  You check your social media pages and there goes another hour.   A misdirected employee needs your help to get back on track — another half an hour.  An unexpected phone call eats up twenty minutes.

Sound familiar?

You’re working like mad, but is your business growing? 

Are you working on the right things, the things that help you reach your goals, the things that help you make more money?

The truth is, there’s a ton of stuff to do and not enough time.

Most likely, a full blown strategic planning session with your staff is probably the best medicine.  But right now, that just feels like one more burden.

How could you find the time to carve out a entire day or two for you and your entire staff to just talk and plan when there is already so much to do?

It’s not as hopeless as it sounds.

Small changes can have a big impact.

You’ll be amazed at how just three small changes can make a dramatic difference in what you accomplish.  You’ll begin to feel like a human being again, not just a human doing.

  • Clarify your staff responsibilities:  Get really clear on who is responsible for what.  Make sure your employees know what they are accountable for.  Define specifically what they do and how their efforts move the company forward toward defined goals.  Make their responsibilities measurable.
  • Begin every Monday morning by making a list of your Top Five Priorities for that week.  What five things absolutely must get accomplished?  Then identify the top-one-of-five.  If all else fails, this is the ONE thing I must accomplish.  Have every employee do the same thing.  Then meet every Monday morning to discuss your lists.
  • Never open your email until you have written down your Top Five Priorities.  Yeah, this sucks.  But you have to be ruthless about this.  (Sure, I’d love to think that you want to read my emails first thing Monday morning.  But even this can wait till afternoon.)  Chart your course first, get focused, then set sail.

And if you’re in a place where even these three small changes feel like too much…just do one.

If you can only make one small change, make sure that one thing is your Top Five Priority list.  Your top-five list is your compass, your guide.  Never begin a week without clearly defining for yourself and others what you want to accomplish by the end of the week.

You’ll be delighted with the difference this makes in your productivity.

Sure, a full-blown strategic plan is an incredibly valuable and essential part of being in business.  But sometimes you have to dig yourself out of a hole and get a breath of fresh air before you embark on that journey.

Start where you are. 

The most important thing in life is knowing what’s important.  (Someone famous said that, and I don’t remember who!)

Choosing your Top Five Priorities helps you make peace with the fact that you’ll never be “caught up” — some things just won’t get done.  (Sorry, hate to be the one to break it to you.)  But the important things will.

And my promise to you?  I won’t send you emails on Monday morning! Take care,

Darcie