Whenever we are looking to improve our business we look at a number of areas and often start at looking to improve sales or marketing or our employees or improving our production, I believe we should look at ourselves first.
To improve your business you must take the following steps:
1. Values and purpose
2. Vision and Mission
3. Goals
4. Plan
5. Take action
Values and Purpose.
What are your personal values, if you are not sure you must find out, the best way to find out is to spend some time by yourself and ask the following questions, what do I want my family, friends, community, employees (team members) and customers to remember me for, what do I want them to say about me.
When you have done this write them down and prioritise them and read them often.
What is your purpose in life is the next question, why am I here, why do I do what I do, once again spend some time thinking about this and write it down.
When you have completed this you can now sit down with your family and do the same for the family’s values and purpose, and after this you do the same for your business and get total involvement from your team.
You now have common values and purpose.
Vision and Mission.
What is your vision and mission for your personal life, your family and finally your business. Here you must find out the end, how will it all look like when it is complete, where will I live what will I own, where do I go for my holidays, what will my family have and what will they do, what will my business look like, how many team members will I have how many branches will I have.
Write all of this down and look at it often, you may say this will change from time to time and yes it will and therefore you must regularly change it.
Goals
You can now set your long term and short term goals this needs to be aligned to your values, purpose and vision and mission.
Plan
You can now plan on how you are going to achieve this, planning needs to be in the following order, plan the next 12 months, then break it down in a 90 day plan and after that into a weekly plan, you must plan and review daily, when you do this is your decision, the important thing is that you must do it the same time every day, if you do it in the morning make sure it is every morning and the same if you do it at night or during the day.
Take action
It is now time to put your plan into action and make it happen, this is perhaps the most difficult as our environment will continue to put pressure on us to do the things that others want us to do, it is therefore important to understand that for us to succeed is to do the things that will satisfy our values and purpose, our vision and mission and our life long goals.
Always remember “We learn from our past, we plan for our future but we must live in the present”
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