4 Types Of Plans You Need In Your Business

TRANSCRIPT AUTOMATICALLY GENERATED Hey, Hey. So as we're going into the second half of the year, and I'm seeing lots of people starting to talk about having planning, retreats and building out what they plan to do for the second half of the year, I wanted to walk you through the types of plans you should have in your business. So I think most people will have kind of a revenue plan, maybe a financial plan that includes costs and maybe a project plan, something that's in an, a sauna or a cookout that has step-by-step what needs to happen, to achieve whatever outcome. But actually you want to start much higher than that. So your strategic plan is actually a much higher level plan that a lot of businesses don't have. And what this plan should be doing is looking far out into your business. It's looking at a two to 10 year time horizon. Now I know 10 years might feel impossible to imagine. So you could make it a five-year plan or a three-year plan. In the strategic plan, you're less about how is this going to happen? It's much more about where am I steering my business over that time horizon. So where do I want the business to go in five years? And what does that look like at a high level? Next comes your operational plan. And this is still higher level than that project plan that you're putting in click op or a sauna. Your operational plan looks at what and when and uses a much shorter timeline, your operational plan is usually for a year. So this is the kind of plan that you're sitting down being like, okay, for the next full quarters. So you're looking at what products am I going to launch? Am I starting a YouTube channel? Am I starting a pod cost? What's important to understand about the operational plan is it is not task based it's outcome-based or objective based. So your operational plan would have something like launch group program in September as an example, it's an objective, but it doesn't detail. The intricacies needed to achieve that launch. while we're thinking in that 12 month time horizon and that operational plan, we need to think about the financial plan. And this is the plan that most entrepreneurs have some form of plan in place. Sometimes it's just revenue. Sometimes it's not really tied to anything, but if you have an operational plan and you know, what's coming, you should have revenue targets that match that and corresponding costs. The financial plan really works alongside your operational plan. They're very interconnected. If you think about your revenue targets, that's going to inform what objectives you need to have in your business over the next 12 months to reach that, In the same way, the things that you plan to do are going to reflect themselves in the cost, in your financial plan. So if your objective is two grand, that's going to show up in that financial plan as unrealistic, you're going to see massive costs without potentially the same amounts of revenue. So they really need to work hand in hand. The tactical plan or action plan or project plan will initially feel a bit like a to-do list, it needs to be way more structured. So this is much more of your 90 day plan, where you're looking at, what is the objective for these 90 days, you pulling that from your operational plan and which tasks need to happen to reach that objective and who is going to do those tasks as a rule, you want to have one task, one owner. So you've got clear responsibility. Everybody knows what they're doing. This is the kind of plan that's now in your sauna and your click up that you're working through that you're logging into every day that you've got, okay, what needs to happen next? So in the same way that these plans all have different time horizons Will also change at different frequencies. So the tactical plan is being looked at and adjusted and tweaked almost daily to make sure it hits that objective. In 90 days, the operational plan is probably going to be more of a once a quarter thing if you think about your operational plan, instead of thinking of it as being a calendar year, think of it as being full quarters. So at the end of each quarter, you've now added a new quarter onto that plan. So you need to think about, okay, what's going to happen now, nine to 12 months out. Does anything need to change what you planned in the next three, six and nine months? That may have implications on your revenue plan. if you're not hitting your revenue targets, or if you're way over your revenue targets, that may change what happens in your operational plan, your strategic plan shouldn't need to change as frequently. Your strategic plan is very much the north star of the business, the guiding principles, the direction that you're moving in, So it's not detailed enough that you should be needing to change your strategy unless something in your business environment or in your life has changed enough to warrant it. So instead, when you sit down to do your half year planning, I want to encourage you to think about what happens in the next four quarters. So what's happening in the next full quarters? High-level what are my objectives? What does that mean for revenue? What does that mean for expenses? Okay. Now what's happening in the next quarter. What is my action plan for the next 90 days? This is going to really keep your business steering in the direction of that longterm vision of that long-term strategy. In the entrepreneurial space, there was a lot of emphasis on 90 day plans because honestly, that's all our brains can compute and that's for a really detailed, what do we want to do? Kind of plan. Here's what concerns me is if you put together a full 90 day plans and you've only looked at the 90 day time horizon. All you're going to look up in full quarters time and find yourself in the wrong spot on your long-term plan. Are you going to have veered off course without noticing? So by all means detailed 90 day plans for the coming third quarter of a year, but make sure that you have a rolling operational plan, financial plan and a stable strategic plan to steer the business.