It’s hard to accomplish anything without a plan. Whether you’re coaching a football team, cooking Thanksgiving dinner, or running a small business, you need a strategic plan. A strategic plan looks at all the things your small business could do and narrows it down to the things it is actually good at doing. A strategic plan also helps business [ Read More ]
Strategic planning has gotten a bad rap with some business owners. You value flexibility and freedom so much you are concerned that a strategic plan will constrain you, clip your wings, strip away your entrepreneurial spirit, and ability to act. The notion of committing to a plan smacks of a bureaucracy you want to avoid. But, the truth is [ Read More ]
Beatles lead guitarist George Harrison once said, “If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will take you there.” His point is, obviously, that if you don’t have a vision of where you want to be, there’s no right or wrong next step. When you think about strategic planning, the same idea applies: If you don’t have a [ Read More ]
Years ago, a “friend” who thought he was a mechanic, as did I, offered to improve my car’s performance. He removed parts of the engine, fiddled around with them, and reassembled them. When he finished, I saw some of the engine parts on the ground next to the car. He said that they were not needed and did not [ Read More ]
