Step 1 of the 4-Step Business Plan: Where are you going?

A guest blog post from Mark Painter:

My previous blog introduced ‘The 4 Step Business Plan’, a simple and easy way to start writing
and structuring your business plan. It is based on the concept of approaching planning just as you
would when organising a long trip.

Step 1 is to understand where you are going, your vision. Look into a crystal ball and list the
features that describe how you want your business to look in the short term (1 to 3 years), and the
longer term (5+ years). You will probably have more short-term items listed than long-term ones,
as forecasting and planning become more difficult the further you look into the future. Try to
commit yourself to specific dates, e.g. ‘1 Sept 26’, rather than vague timeframes like ‘1 year’, as
the latter can be harder to pin down.

The broader and more detailed your vision, the better. Consider areas such as business structure,
financials, markets, products, people, duties, and responsibilities. It is also important to include
your personal vision, that is, your short- and long-term aspirations for life outside of work. Your
business and personal visions are closely linked, and the aim must be to work towards achieving
both, rather than one at the expense of the other.

The support and buy-in of your team will be vital if you are to achieve your ambitions. Share
relevant elements of your vision with your people, and by doing so, encourage others to do the
same. Although there will be an overall common purpose, it is important that everyone
understands that different needs and priorities exist within any team, and recognising this can
improve working relationships between board members, groups of managers, or across
departments.

Thinking of your business as an entity, try to summarise its overarching aim in one sentence: this
is your mission statement. Consider involving a range of colleagues in this process, both junior
and senior, new recruits and long-serving employees, in order to gain different views and
perspectives.

Backing up your mission statement are your broad beliefs that underpin what your team does and
how they interact with colleagues, suppliers, and customers, your values. Gaining employee
ownership of your values is crucial and makes managing performance far easier. For example, if
employees have suggested, ‘Always put the customer first’ as a value, it should be relatively easy
to gain their agreement to work to a set of standards for quality and service.

Step 1 helps us to establish our desired destination. To prepare for the journey, we now need to
establish our current position. We will look at step 2, ‘Where are you now?’ in my next blog.