How to plan for a future you want

‘If you don’t know where you’re going, you’ll end up someplace else.’ -Yogi Berra

My parents as they got older, often got into their car without knowing where they were going exactly. Okay, they knew roughly they were heading for – the Lakes or North Yorkshire or Northumberland but their precise destination or their route? Not really. ‘I wonder where that road goes?’ ‘Do you know, I don’t think we’ve ever gone that way, shall we see what’s it like?’ It was often a magical mystery tour and the start of many an adventure!

But can you imagine trying to run a business like that? You’ve got an idea and you just set off and see where the wind takes you. This might sound far-fetched but you would be surprised how may business owners don’t have a true vision for their business or a plan for how to get there. There are also those who plan their business but don’t factor in their life.

Just stop and think for a minute of the planning you do for a long drive:

• get details into Sat Nav
• decide on the best route given known roadworks and delays
• decide on the best time to travel
• decide what time you need to set off to be there on time, allowing for adjustments
• find where the nearest parking is
• find the half-way point for a pitstop and coffee

You do all this planning for a pretty straightforward car journey.  Why would you not put the same effort into planning your business journey?

​‘If you want to scale, grow or sell your business, you need to plan.’

It all has to start with you, and what you want for your life!

Personal Planning

Whilst working my way through my career in the world of big business, we talked about personal development, and how we could become better at our role within the business or progress to the next level. But what we wanted out of life or what we saw as our ideal future never really came up. Maybe we were all too young, too focused on progression, to recognise that you only get one crack at life, or that, if you plan for it, you can have both – a happy, successful life and a successful business.

I do understand why people say they don’t want to plan their life though. As with any plan, you have to recognise that things happen, things change. We change as we grow and develop. It goes without saying that every successful plan needs to be adjusted and tweaked when the opportunities, or the challenges come.

It’s been a real eye-opener with clients at times when we explore their ‘Vision and Values.’ It’s that light-bulb moment when someone realises that life and business plans are inexorably linked. When they look ahead and say ‘I want great relationships with my kids in the future,’ but realise that leaving the house when their children are asleep and returning when they’ve gone to bed isn’t going to build that bond.

We get to asking: ‘If this is what I want in life, how will my business support and enrich this? Can I find better ways of working so I’m at home for bedtime stories three nights a week, that Sundays always a day off for family?’ For example.

Without that Vision, that wider focus, you’ll start planning for a future you may not want. So put the time in and really drill down to what that is. There’s no right answer, it’s down to you. So I recommend:

3 essentials for Personal Planning

1. Know what’s REALLY important to you – what your true priorities are (those things that would still be important if you heard the world was going to end in 5 years!) – the values you want to live by that will govern your behaviour
2. Be clear about what success with these true priorities looks like to you – what your ideal future looks like
3. Have a Personal Management System that keeps your life and your business goals in harmony

Do one thing: Take some time to answer these crucial questions:

1. What is my Vision, my true priority?
2. What are the Values I want to live by?
3. When I am successful who will I be, what will I be doing, with whom and what will I have?

Have a great week and thanks for reading.

​Our Systems4Scale Bootcamp on 10&11th October 2018 starts with your Vision and Values. So if this blog resonates with you why not sign up? Here’s a link to our brochure