10 Aug 2020

It’s Not about Your Style – It’s about Your Plan

Not every business owner or company leader is a planner by nature – it’s a fact of life that we are all wired differently. But whether you call yourself an INTJ, a South, an 8w7 or any of the other many, many personality types, everyone  can learn to step back, see the challenges and opportunities at hand, and create a plan to reach (and hopefully exceed) your goals. Great entrepreneurs with leadership styles across the map and personalities from here to Sunday can do it and so can you.

Here are three steps to help you create a plan, for business and for life:

Step Back: This sounds easy, but for business leaders and company leaders emotionally tied to their business, their team or their mission, detaching to see the big picture can be extremely difficult. That gets even more difficult if the owner or leader is also the company’s main technician (which is a discussion for another day). We’ve found that taking a step back really starts with getting into the right mindset and finding perspective. Take a little time off, unplug, thinks about the goals you have for your business and your life, assess how you’re doing toward meeting those goals, and think about the challenges and opportunities you have before you. If everything is on point, then great! You’re ready to focus on a plan that puts your success into fast forward. If things are a little rocky or the weaknesses are easy to spot, then that’s where your plan for improvement should start.

Get Feedback: Being at the top of a business – whether you have 2 employees or 2,000 employees – is lonely. Don’t let the “big picture” you came up with while you were stepping back turn into a ball of big ideas that gets lost in a vacuum. Take the time to meet with a mentor, a coach, a friend or someone else who doesn’t have direct involvement in your business to talk through what’s on your mind and take honest, open feedback. Be an active listener. Once you have your ideas fleshed out, work through the details with your leadership team before you create a more firm plan.

The Plan: Once you have your ideas fleshed out and the feedback you need to make big decisions and take massive action… do it. Don’t let fear keep you from turning your good business into a great business. Not everything you put into a plan will come to fruition and, of course, you’ll have to make changes along the way, but without a plan, you and your leadership team are focused solely on staying afloat than you are on being successful. Once you have a plan built, start back at the beginning, take a step back, take an objective look at what you’ve created, get the feedback you need, adjust as needed… and then GO!

Those steps all said, there are three words you’ll want to keep at the forefront of your plan – flexible, pivot and mentor. If the pandemic of 2020 has taught up anything, it’s that the best made plans sometimes have to be thrown to the wind. Remember that, while your plan should be your guiding light, sometimes things have to change. If you need help detaching your emotions from your business, stepping back to see the opportunities and the challenges, taking action on your plan or more, your local Growth Coach can help: https://www.thegrowthcoach.com/find-a-coach.

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