Change is everywhere—pandemic, inflation, interest rate hikes, social unrest—and the examples are obvious because they're happening to all of us, all at once. Underneath all this shared experience is the realization that even when things start to seem more “normal,” there’s still plenty of change impacting us. Small businesses are often the first to feel the next big change.
Maybe this extended exposure to continual change has helped you discover new ways to hard-wire sustainability into your business. Here’s another way to do just that: Plan. Set goals. Draw a picture of what you want your business to be like a year from now. In other words, don’t be satisfied letting your business happen in reaction to changing conditions you can’t control. Instead, have a clear picture of the results you want. It’s a powerful way to improve your adaptability, be prepared for whatever comes and strengthen your business and financial sustainability. If you know the results you want, you can make decisions and plan your actions. You’ll be creating the business you want instead of just reacting to the unpredictable.
Begin by getting clear on your financial goals for 2024. Find the middle ground between unfounded hopes and excessive pessimism; be reasonable, but not overly cautious. Goals need to be both achievable and aspirational in order to inspire the work ahead. Ask yourself what would need to happen in your business to reach a level of financial sustainability that would feel like it really matters. Connect your goals to the longer-term strategic vision you have for your business, get them recorded so you won’t lose or forget them, and start working backward from the results you want to the steps you’ll need to take to get there.
Here are three powerful commitments you can make to annual planning to help get you started.
If you want your business to grow, you need to be able to see it when it’s done and at each stage along the way. What’s your business doing three years from now? How much revenue is it producing? How many people work for you, and in what roles? What do your customers say about doing business with you? Equally importantly, what’s your life like, both at work and when you’re not at work? Every creation begins as a work of imagination, and imagination is a leader’s job.
Here’s an exercise to help you get started imagining the future: Focus on one big goal that really matters for 2024—and just let yourself dream. Don’t be held back by false modesty, doubt or uncertainty. Make yourself conscious of your inner voice and don’t let it tell you that you can’t do it, don’t know how, or don’t really believe in yourself. You can deal with that later, after you know what you really want to create. For now, just give yourself permission to imagine.
Don’t do this step until you have a clear picture of where you want your business to be. When you have that firmly in mind, take an objective look at where you are now. This will be your starting point, and the way you’ll measure the distance you need to travel to get from here to there.
There are two parts to your baseline. First, you need an inventory of the skills, experiences, qualifications and resources you already have and can marshal to work toward your goals in 2024. Make a list. Include your own personal attributes and resources, and then take a walk around your business and see what else and who else can contribute. Take a fresh look at the people and systems you already have and re-imagine what those people and systems could do to push your business toward your goals.
Second, you need a current-state evaluation of each of the Seven Essential Systems in your business:
If you’ve never done this kind of evaluation, here’s our comprehensive business assessment.
It’ll help you gauge the strengths and challenges of each system in your business. And it’ll tell you what’s missing that you haven’t created yet.
A thoughtful, thorough baseline will give you a clear understanding of where your company currently stands in the context of planning for your goal. It’ll also show you some of the assumptions you’ve made, and whether you want to keep them or replace them. You’ll have a realistic starting point for planning.
So now you’ve fully imagined your goal and set up the context from your business assessment. Next, revisit the Seven Essential Systems and work out what needs to change within each one to get from where you are now to where you want to be.
These are only a few of the questions you’ll want to consider during your planning process. You can find more examples in our free Annual Planning Guide for 2023.
By the time you complete the goal-planning process, you’ll know the questions that you need to address, and you’ll probably have answered some of them. The rest can become part of your project planning. More importantly, you’ll have painted the picture of where you want to be next year at this time, when you’ll be planning for 2025. Don’t let yourself feel overwhelmed. If the vision you’re holding really matters to you, it’ll be worth the work.