SPECIAL FEATURE: Simplybiz CEO talks business plans

"Firstly Happy New Year! The perennial problem is when do you stop saying this? Well for me it’s now. The reason for the extended festive greetings was so I could ask the following question. How are the New Year’s Resolutions going? I am guessing fair to middling for some and out the window for others. Hopefully we are all still feeling positive.

January is normally so hard for a number of reasons – dark nights, broken resolutions, an extra week until pay day and the long wait for another Bank Holiday. It also tends to be when we look at our business and maybe decide to do something different. Whilst this is always a good discipline why not look at it differently this year.

We are always looking to change things and we tend to focus on what is not working. Looking at the negative can make you negative. Why not begin your business review by looking at what went right and not what went wrong? If it went right then it must have had a positive impact upon your business.

Make sure that they are highlighted and stuck up for all to see. Focus initially on your achievements and do them more often. Also look at ways in which you can improve them. By doing this you should already be feeling more positive.

Next is the tricky bit, looking at the plans that cannot quite be classed as completed! Firstly are there any that can be classed as “yet to achieve” rather than “did not achieve/start”?

Again focusing on the part of the plan where there has been some movement and progress can bring big dividends. Be honest with yourself when assessing how much of the action has been achieved. If it has already been started then you are closer to finishing it and achieving something. Create the action plan to finish it.

All of the above should form part of the business plan. I know that at least 90% of us have a business plan, however the questions are:

- When was it written?

- Where is it now?

- How often do your review it?

- Do all the staff know what the targets are and how they can help achieve it?

Never be afraid to change a business plan, as we live in an ever changing market and what may have felt both achievable and relevant last year may not be so important this year. Also the business plan does not need to be reviewed every day.

Use it to create monthly targets and review against those. I always tend to find that having a weekly/monthly list of my targets and objectives help me focus. I am sure that there is an old saying “A person without lists is a person without direction”. If not then there is now!

The key for me, especially when all the newspapers and TV news programmes are full of doom and gloom, is to focus on the positives whilst trying to address the “yet to achieve”. Let everyone else worry about the negatives. Most negatives are outside of your control. Focus on what you can control and make sure that you manage the outcome. If you do then we should all have a positive year and there will be no need for New Year resolutions."