Reviewing Your Business Plan, the 3 Critical Elements for Success

As Autumn tumbles around us, I’m sure I’m not the only one who finds themselves with a head full of “To-Do”s and “Planning Ahead”s. Perhaps you’ve ordered your diary for next year – or am I the only one who needs pen and paper to make things happen?

Having spoken to others in the Your Business Matters community, I know that many of us see this time of year as a time for review. We’re thinking about what we’d hoped to achieve this year, wondering if we’ll hit those goals, and what we can expect for next year. This year, of course, there may be additional concerns – how our business will fare if we see the expected recession? What impact will rising costs bring and what can we do about them?

Working with so many business owners and leaders, I can safely say that one exercise common to those who are successful, is planning.

And, as ActionCOACH Jo Sahunta prompted us, “this is a great time for reflection, a time to review our progress and create a better plan for next year.”

Business Growth – You Have to Plan for It

Business planning is a much bigger topic than we can cover in just a few hundred words, so in this post we’ll focus on the benefits of creating and reviewing your plan and why it works.

So, what is a business plan?

This is a big question. Some people create business plans to gain finance or external support. These will usually have been written to serve a specific purpose and once that has been reached, they’re rarely looked at again.

Formal business plans often consider long term goals and forecasts – a year, five years, ten years, maybe more. While a vision of the future is useful, for it to provide real benefit, your business plan must also have a sense of the steps to reach those distant goals.

Investing the time to create your plan is the most important step, the second most important step is to put aside more time later to review it.

Business Planning – Making it Work for You

Planning is a doing word – it’s the activity which will bring results not just the words (or diagrams) on the page. So, how do you create your plan?

There are all sorts of options and we’d recommend that, if you’re not sure, a business coach or mentor will be the right person to support you in this. Whatever else you do, your planning should encourage you to consider:
• Where you and your business is now

• Where you want to be

• How you will make the necessary changes to reach your goals

• Covering different areas of your business – e.g., finances, sales, marketing, people, products or services.

Once you’ve created your plan it should be regularly reconsidered and updated.

Weekly, monthly, quarterly or annual review will allow you to consider your plans for growth and their relevance for you now. As ActionCOACH Justin Charlton-Jones explained to us, “Your plan is a living and working thing, you must review it to keep up your momentum.”

Why is this critical for success?

It’s likely you’ve heard the quote from Winston Churchill, “He who fails to plan is planning to fail”.

In times of uncertainty, like we’re seeing now, many people ask “What is the point of planning when so much is unknown?” In fact, the act of planning is building a much stronger foundation for those businesses. Those who write and keep focused on their plan have a much greater awareness of their business and can be flexible when needed to cope and adjust with changes around them.

These three elements below are critical to your success and supported by your business plan.

1. Focus on Your Vision

Your plan should allow you to articulate your picture of success.

Then, having defined this, ongoing review will either cement this understanding or give you the opportunity to amend it. Regularly returning to your image will ensure the day-to-day goals you set yourself are aligned with your overall vision.

Interrogate your decisions against the vision you hold for your business.

2. Creating Realistic Goals

While your vision sets the aims for your future business growth, your business plan also provides the space to identify the actions needed to achieve that growth with realistic goals.

Setting achievable goals is essential – but doesn’t always come easily.

For each step within your plan you will need to prioritise, understand dependencies and not only your timescales but the amount of work required to make things happen.

Break goals down into achievable tasks.

 3. Remind Yourself What Progress Looks Like

Having created your picture of success and laid out steps to reach it, regular review of your plan can establish how far you’ve progressed.

Starting each review with an assessment of where you are now, will often prompt reminders of how far you have come. And reviewing your business plan will also hold you accountable – if you didn’t hit that goal, why not?

It’s completely acceptable to deviate from your plan, as long as you know why and what the next steps should be.

 Be accountable for your progress – if you’ve missed things it’s important to understand why, but it’s equally important to celebrate your successes.

 Review your business plan to grow your business

Business planning is a complex subject – much more than we can cover in one blog post. We hope this has prompted you to consider your own plan, thinking about your successes in 2022 and hopes for 2023. If it has also inspired you explore the subject further we believe finding the right coach or mentor will make a huge difference to your business.

We’d like to thank Jo Sahunta and Justin Charlton-Jones of ActionCOACH who helped us create this post.

Creating and strengthening your business you’ll need the right people to support you – whether that’s coaches and mentors or collaborative partners to work with. We’d love you to check out our networking groups to find your new team.