Your Company’s Vision – Part Three
Creating a One-Year Plan
This part is when the work gets fun. You need a goal post to know where you will be going over the next year. Create a statement that says, “One year from today this business WILL BE.” I put that in caps because this will and must happen. If you ever want to get to your three-year or ten-year goal, you must hit the goals within that first year.
Review Your Ten- and Three-Year Plan
Remember that each of the goals works in tandem as you move backward through the plan. While the ten-year goal is an ideal place, the three-year goal is a more specific picture of where you want the business to be in three years.
Your three-year plan should be a S.M.A.R.T. one. Smart stands for
Specific
Measurable
Attainable
Realistic
Timeframed
Remember to get the whole team on the same page; it may take a while, but the creating the one-year plan will be easier if everyone is on board with the ten- and three-year goals.
Your three-year goal should include one or two very specific figures that are a telltale sign of the size of the organization. Once you’re your three-year revenue and profit goal, you can begin to develop the roadmap to get there through the one-year plan.
Developing the Plan
Don’t think of this as an arbitrary date. It does not have to be one year from today, but it needs to be in a short time-frame.
Remember you want those in your leadership team to set these goals with you. Whenever you get with your team, you can pick a goal together. To do this step, just look at the numbers and decide on the revenue goal, profit goal, and how will you measure your progress?
Now, to make that one-year plan a reality, you and your team will need to decide the top things that must be done to make that goal happen. These could be anywhere from three to seven things that need to get done. These things, then, need to be made S.M.A.R.T just like the three-year plan, and the entire team must agree upon them.
How This Works
In 2012, I was running the day-to-day operations as an owner-operator of a 1.5 million-dollar business in Atlanta. I was the CEO, COO, CMO, and chief janitor (cleaning up all the messes). You name the role; I was probably doing it. I told myself on New Year’s Eve that one year from today I would get myself out of customer-facing roles. I would no longer be answering the phones, dealing with customer complaints, and taking payments. This plan was my S.M.A.R.T. goal.
One-Year Plan – Remove myself from day-to-day customer facing issues
Milestone 1: I needed to detail and document all of the items in our company that were customer facing. Anything that deals with a customer, I had to document it.
Due Date: January 15th
Milestone 2: I then wrote a manual that dealt with every single customer-facing situation that takes place and detailed what should happen and why.
Due Date: February 28th
Milestone 3: I developed a scorecard metric that allowed me to monitor my replacement to ensure the person was keeping the same level of service that I provided.
Due Date: March 31st
Milestone 4: I took the written manual and turned those into training videos. I did this so when we hired new employees I wasn’t just telling them to read a book (some people don’t like that), but they also saw me doing it in person. Even though I didn’t have the time to train everyone one-on-one, each person watched a hands-on video of me giving the same instructions.
Due Date: May 31st
Milestone 5: I created a people analyzer to ensure that I hired the right person for the customer facing role that I was about to hire. I needed to make sure I knew the specific type of person I needed to replace me.
Milestone 6: I hired, trained, and managed my replacement through a 90-day period to see if the new hire could duplicate my efforts.
Due Date: August 31st
Putting It All Together
Through this process, I was able to hire someone else to do the job that I was doing with a great system in place to train the employee and hold this person accountable. By creating this system, my replacement was able to perform at the same level I did.
If you need to do the same, it provides a great foundation for your plan to get someone to do the job at or close to the same level you performed it. Then, you can do what you do best.
Many business owners today are stuck working IN the business vs. ON it. This simple, but not easy, plan shows you how I got out from behind the counter and got back to what I do best, working on my business.
I hope that you can use this information to develop your own one-year plan that will help you get to a point where you can begin to work on the business rather than work in it.
Would you like to find help creating your one-year plan? Contact Legacy 4:12 today to see how can help you do what you do best.
