Everyone wants to know the secret to building a successful business. Secrets are not really complex. You only need to apply it. In essence, a little more work than rubbing Aladdin lights. The importance of and the need to have a clear business vision, mission and plan cannot be emphasized enough. Then again, this is a useless exercise! There is no point in spending time and effort to create this!
Yes, you read it correctly. It’s no use if all you do is make a mission, vision, and plan, and never check it regularly to ascertain whether they are still relevant. It’s not worth the time and effort if you don’t regularly measure where the business is against where your expectations are in accordance with these items.
Now you create a valuable method to move your business towards achieving success. For example, let’s look at the Borders Books. They look away from their business and their customers want and need. They don’t even recognize real threats, Amazon, until it’s too late. They are too busy seeing what other businesses do, such as gift programs, and not their own business and direction for the results of the bottom line.
This is not to say you should not watch what your competitors do or what other businesses do. What is being said is that you don’t need to copy what is being done. You must focus on your vision, mission and plan. You have to measure and track and revisite and make adjustments as needed.
Business with any size must have a process that applies to getting this metric. There are times when the biggest corporation has created such a nightmare, the ability to easily and easily know where you are and what direction you need to take is lost in mixed chaos. It’s time to break it down and simplify. If the most senior people cannot explain in five or ten minutes with pencils and napkins where you are and where you go, you have made your business too complicated. If it applies to large companies, even more for small to medium businesses.
You might not like reading this, but it is a fact. There are about half a dozen numbers that must tell the facts about what your business has done, and what happens in the future. Learn this and create an adjustment needed to stay on the lane or to return to the path.
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