It’s ironic how so many small business owners see the activities of the business as separate from their business goals. For example a business owner might have goals to increase response time to customer inquiries. While this sounds good, this goal will go nowhere if the business does not assign a staff person to make sure this goal is met. Moreover, assigning a person to the task is not enough but ensuring the staff person has enough time in their day to perform this task is also essential. When an outcome is important to an organization, it has be allocated real resources that can make the goal happen. Real resources include paid staff time.

Every business should have a plan of action (strategy) on how they plan to succeed. If you fail to plan, you plan to fail. Success is not accidental! Once you have your plan in place, the next thing you will need to do is decide what activities are necessary to bring these activities to life and lastly, allocate resources to these activities. In this way, you are not wasting scarce resources on activities that bring very little value to your business. You are more likely to achieve success when your focus resources to produce desired outcomes. Doing things just because it has always been done that way is the slow death of a business.

A business owner should have strategic planning sessions at least once a year. As part of the strategic sessions the following should be discussed:

• Business profitability and most profitable products and services
• Cash flow management
• Production goals for the upcoming year or quarter (if quarterly sessions)
• Allocation of resources to goals
• Benchmarks and KPIs to measure how well goals are being met
• Evaluation and communication plan.

Consistently addressing these questions in a business can turn an average business into a very successful one. If you don’t know where you are going anywhere will take you there. Choose a destination and draw a map to get you there.