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Aug 07 2019

Are You Achieving Your Personal Success Plan for the year? Or Has It Fallen By the Wayside?

Businesses and organizations of all types are known to create business plans at least annually.  These are shared with various leaders, divisions and departments with all focused on achieving them.  They are reviewed with regularity and hopefully, they are achieved. .

This is all good and the norm.  However, the same approach definitely applies to individuals wanting to move up a ladder in their personal careers.  Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem to get the same determination and focus.  This becomes a missed opportunity.  This is especially the case when we are in a time of low unemployment which provides individuals with a comfortable sense of job security.  Feeling secure is what we all want and yet, what is overlooked is the opportunity that can accompany it.  Such times are also the most ideal ones for us to personal business plan

determine where we want to be in our jobs or careers at the end of a year.  In other words, create our personal business plan around the goals we have.  Such a plan allows us to actually look to the future and where we would like to go in order to enhance our career … including the added income this often represents.  I experience more and more individuals actually thinking about this and creating their plan to achieve it.  This is actually exciting and the right way to start.

Consider the advantages of making your plan.  They include:

  1. Providing someone with a sense of direction in terms of goals
  2. Provides something on which we can continually focus as a measure to how we’re doing
  3. Helps us to recognize obstacles and thus, the ability to make a needed change to stay our course
  4. Provides the guidelines for our decision making as we progress through the year

Terrific!  The plan is in place and unfortunately this is where progress stops and too often.  The second KEY element of realizing the desired success in one’s plan is the execution of it.  Execution is a concept easy to talk about howestrategy to successver, more challenging to actually follow through on and therein lies a potential stumbling block. Once you convert your plan into specific actions and behaviors you have a plan you can manage and measure.  Here are some attributes leading to successful execution:

  • Having a sharpened focus by informing us of what we need to do in order to successfully execute the plan.
  • Provides a roadmap of what we need to learn and master in order to enhance the competence our advancing will require.
  • Builds our passion for what we want to achieve and the associated enthusiasm for doing what is needed to what is needed.

Be warned.  There are some real factors that tend to interfere with true progress and the achievement of our intended success.  These include:

  • change resistanceOne’s personal resistance to change because it often takes us to a zone of discomfort. Whereas the status quo might make us feel more relaxed it does not move us in our desired direction.  Giving into this becomes a big factor in personal plans being abandoned.
  • Feeling there is a lack of needed resources that will enable us to move upward in our planned direction. Giving into this feeling without exploring what’s possible and how to acquire what we need is to basically abandoned our personal plan and the related goal.
  • Experiencing the personal politics that can be pervasive in so many office environments can be enough to derail a personal growth and success plan. This is where our commitment to where we intend to go is so important so that we are willing and able to withstand the opinions and resistance of others around us.

growth sign

Execution is essential to the equation of success. Just as a new year’s resolution requires a committed plan, the goals we have for our own success do as well.  And yet, without the determination to execute in a specific and meaningful manner, our plans and the related success it can bring become nice ideas.

plan blocks

It’s now August … early in the second half of 2019.  With 5 months remaining there is still adequate time to make serious progress in getting to where you want to personally be.  Maybe you’ll take out your plan, dust if off and jump into full-fledged execution.  That’s all it takes!  Execute today and win tomorrow.
Mike Dorman

Written by Mike · Categorized: Business Planning, Employee Success, Uncategorized

Mar 02 2016

Your 2016 Business Plan ~ A Flavor of the Month or A Lasting Success?

Welcome to March … the third month of the year … the last month of the quarter. By this time you’re well on the way to achieving your plan for the year. The things you’ve committed to do have been in motion and you are totally working your plan … or are you? Invest 3 minutes and read on for your personal plan’s litmus test.

In speaking to coaching prospects we are challenged with the likes of … “I’m not looking forIce Cream Flavorsr a flavor of the month. I’ve tasted them all and will only consider something that is lasting and sustainable”. I get it and whether you’re working with a coach or forging ahead on your own, you all know that the scoop of ice cream simply doesn’t last. It doesn’t remain solid and the taste is short lived.

Interesting enough, it’s in this third month of the year that we encounter melting business plans. Let’s presume you made it through early January when so many abandon their resolves and, although you can breathe that sigh of relief, there are many pitfalls that loom on the path to your success.  The trick is to get around and beyond them and in that sense we can’t a low ourselves to become too relaxed.

Mitch Evans authored an article for Printing News addressing business plan failure. I prefer to interpret it as what succeeding in the execution and achievement of your plan requires. Our experience over many years of business coaching sees his points as right on!

Success in staying the course requires:
1. A Clear Purpose
What is the underlying driver and purpose for the plan you have created? Is it the resulting dollars? Expanding your business into a new market or product? What’s your main thing?
2. A Road Map
What is your plan to get where you want to go? And what other people or person need(s) to understand your Business Planintended goal and your plan to get there? Keeping this a secret is a path to abandonment on your part.
3. Prioritizing Your Priorities
So many things to do … always … and yet, without being selective and committed to what has to happen first … staying that course … the chance of accomplishing the plan is diminished.
4. Follow-through
Check-ins on your own progress as well as those on whom you depend to do aspects of your plan is a way to determine that you as well as other relied upon people are remaining on track.
5. An Accountability Commitment
Working on a year-long plan is greatly facilitated by our willingness to hold ourselves accountable to remaining focused and doing our ‘next steps’ as we move down our chosen path. In fact, without this element, our chance of success is highly questionable.
6. Celebration
To some this seems like a waste of time. “I’ll celebrate at the end of the year when I achieve my goal”. Why? The challenge to stay the path, to be willingly accountable and to achieve the intermediary goals along the way isn’t easy. Pats on the back or ‘celebrations’ fuel the fire to forge ahead.
7. Communication!
You simply cannot do this enough. Where are you in the plan? Who else has a stake in achieving the planMelting Ice Cream that should or needs to know. Every time you communicate you are also reinforcing your commitment to working it.

You didn’t develop your plan for 2016 with any intention other than to achieve it. Our bet is, however, that you have experienced some form of meltdown in the past that has resulted in less than hitting your intended mark. The flavor of the month does go away as intended. Your plan doesn’t have to!

Mike Dorman

Written by Mike · Categorized: Business Planning, Organizational Effectiveness

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