Planning for next year – it starts with tomorrow!
by Paula Kibbe
That may sound totally strange, or you may think I'm stating the obvious. As a working mother who is a member of our town's School Committee and with two young boys who are beginning to participate in sports sometimes long term planning is, as our Chairman Doug Brown jokes, "What's for lunch?" However, since working with Paradigm and the busier our lives become, the more I realize that what feels like non-productive time – meditating, planning, brainstorming – is critical to the future of my health, my family and my business.
When thinking about planning for next year, start with tomorrow. What's on your agenda? Do you have time blocked off to work on creating a plan? Many folks tend to put off things like planning because they're reacting to customer needs; filing year-end reports and juggling holidays. If your day is jam-packed with to-dos, why not set the alarm 30 minutes early and sip on your coffee while you begin to highlight the things you need and want to do for next year. Schedule some time into each day until the plan is done. Step two of this process is building time in to your daily schedule at the start of, and throughout next year, to address the small tasks that must be completed as steps toward achieving your plan. It's important to plan for the unexpected, as well. Plan on someone getting sick during a major launch; plan on computers crashing as you type your biggest client pitch; plan on a key employee finding a new job. The more well prepared you are with contingencies, the better you'll be at minimizing disruptions and preventing lost time.
And I'd be remiss if I didn't mention communication as a key in planning; why make the plan on your own? Set aside time to meet with your staff to obtain their input and make sure that their departmental and/or individual plans align with the organizational plan. If you don’t articulate the goals and plans, and revisit them throughout the year it'll be harder to achieve those goals. I speak from experience, I'm looking at my schedule for the next three months and creating appointments with myself to make sure I get done those things that may not be urgent, but are certainly very important. So, book a few appointments with yourself and don't let them get postponed. Create a plan for the year and then work backward, breaking it down into quarterly, monthly and daily activities that support implementation of that plan. You'll have an incredibly successful 2010.