Planning Matters

This is the second blog post regarding the 10 Things I Accidentally Learned on the Path to Growth and is a topic many of us as small business owners take for granted. After 25 years in this business, it has become more apparent than ever that planning is a key to success. Zig Ziglar says it this way: “Unless you have definite, precise, clearly set goals, you are not going to realize the maximum potential that lies within you”.


No Plan
I didn’t have a plan for many years. So my examples are more what not to do than what to do. I formed SCCI (now HTS) as a hobby back in 1985. It was just going to be a small sideline business to allow me to help a few folks with their computers.

• Today it is 7 locations across 5 states with 80+ employees that will do over 16M in revenue. It is a hobby that is way out of control.


• Our headquarters office in Harlan has had 5 additions since we began in 1985. So today we have 12,000 square feet attached to the side of our home on the farm in rural Iowa. Not exactly the best plan knowing what I know today.


• HTG was started back in 2000 as a small peer group for four Iowa companies. Today it has become an international group with 240 plus member companies from four countries around the world. Certainly was not what my original expectations were.

Do as I say, not as I did
I could list a few dozen or hundred more examples of how things have happened that were not planned. The ones above are all positive results - maybe not everything they could have been – but not a list of all of my failed planning which doesn't always turn out that way. A failure to plan has cost hundreds of thousands of dollars and caused a lot of pain and chaos. I admit it and can show you the battle scars from eBay sales of obsolete inventory because of no plan in how to control ordering, to business units that were totally unprofitable because they never had a business plan at all, to wasting hours and days of my life because it just happened to me without me taking control of my time with a plan. If you don’t plan, you will struggle to have success. It was back in the late 90’s when things began to unravel for us that I finally figured this out. During the last 10 years or more that planning has been part of our process, our growth and success has been completely different and positive. Planning does matter and it will for you too.

Four Plans
I think there are at least 4 areas you need to plan at a minimum:

• Company business plan – tells you where your company is going


• Leadership plan – tells you how you will lead your company to achieve their plan


• Life plan – tells you how you will balance life and work and achieve the things you say are most important to you


• Legacy plan – tells others what to do in the event your company or you are not able to continue status quo

I have written previously about each of these and you can follow the links to get more details.

Here is the way we see it in HTG - four plans - one we focus on each quarter - which provides a solid way to make sure we are getting things done.



Why don't we do it?

So why is it that most small businesses don’t plan? Here is a list of some of the common excuses I hear from folks. There really are no good reasons, but we convince ourselves these things:

• Planning is hard work and takes time


• Planning never ends


• Planning requires communication


• Planning requires introspection


• Planning requires follow-up and measurement


• Planning requires us to be honest with ourselves


• Planning is bigger than me, myself and I

Hand in hand

Planning goes hand in hand with strategy. You need strategy to give you the “why” to what you are going to work on. But planning takes strategy and tells us the “how, when, what, where, and who” to achieve that strategy. It is important that we take time to plan. It is critical for us to truly grow our company and move toward success. Time to stop making excuses and step up to lead. That means you take time to involve your team, stakeholders and anyone else that should be included – and you just get it done. If you don’t have a plan, you are planning to fail. Don’t let that happen. Get down to business, take the time, invest the energy, and put plans down on paper. It will make a huge difference in your outcome!

Roundtables4Roundtables Part IV

So let’s tackle some of these common issues that most small businesses face today. Let’s cut to the core and admit that unless the business works for us – all we really have is a job. Let’s admit that if things don’t go on when we are away – if we are tied to the pda or phone or email when we are supposed to be coaching soccer for our kids or have our family away on vacation – or even worse can’t remember the last time we were on vacation – let’s admit all we have done is put lipstick on a job and really don’t have a business at all. So that is step one. Evaluate whether or not you really have a business at all. There is nothing wrong with having a reliable job that provides for your needs by the way. Just don’t call it something it isn’t. Let’s get our terms straight. If you have a business – it is not dependent on you to proceed and operate. If you have a business – you can get away and have a life. If you have a business – it is not about YOU.

OK – so those who are left with me – let’s address the first issue that I see most business owners have failed to tackle. The “WHY” of their business. So many businesses today focus on the who, what, when, where, how – but they totally skip the why. WHY is the reason your business exists in the first place? It is where your passion comes from. And by the way, if you aren’t passionate about your business, if you can’t wait to get started each day, you probably have a job. Why did you create this business? What is the PURPOSE it was designed to serve? What do you want to accomplish through it? Do you know the “why”? Answering that question is a key part of writing a business plan. It is core to the motivation for everything else that will happen as part of running your business. It IS the key to success and happiness. Without the “why” you can’t possibly know where you are going or how you will get there. You are directionless and wandering in the wilderness. So make sure you know the “why”.

Do you need a business plan? The short answer is yes. You need it for a few reasons:

1. It is the basis to hold an owner accountable. You run your business because you want to be your own boss. That is good in some ways but very bad in others. You need to be accountable and a business plan is part of it.

2. If you participate in any kind of peer group – your group members have to have it. Without your business plan they can’t really give you any meaningful guidance because they have no idea where you are headed.

3. Your employees need it as well. They are on the journey with you. They can’t really do their job until they know what the destination is. The business plan is not about you. It is about the business and the “us” that make it up.

4. Your family should know so they can understand what it will take for you to succeed. That also should give them some opportunity to provide feedback on just how often you will be gone and miss important family activities and events.

5. Your banker should care. Unfortunately many never ask for it – but you should offer to share it and set yourself apart from the majority of small businesses by doing so. And if you don’t have a banking relationship – get one. It is far easier to ask for money when you don’t need it than when you do.

6. Your vendors should care too. Part of your business plan should include key vendor relationships and how that will look in the next 12 months. You may write an individual plan with key vendors – but I suggest you include some parts of it in your overall business plan.

One key reason to know “why” is that it is essential to have any hope of achieving life-work balance. Without the “why” there is likely nothing that will keep you from working all your waking hours in your business except pure exhaustion. The “why” needs to also address your life. It is a key component of writing a life plan. You have to know what the purpose of your life is. Why do you get up each morning? What is it that you want to accomplish through living? Not through your business – but as a result of living your 168 hours this week? Do you know those answers? Have you thought about it? Once you put it on paper and share it with peers or even your spouse – someone can begin to hold you accountable to make sure your actions match your goals. Without accountability life will always lose to business. We are wired that way as entrepreneurial business owners. We can’t afford to let life lose. It has to be top priority.

Life-work balance involves a lot of areas. That is why HTG uses a life planning document to help give some direction on areas you should consider. There is so much to ponder and it is the important stuff. Business is so fleeting. Life is so eternal. Life matters and how we live it matters a lot. No one will wish on their deathbed that they had spent more time in the office. Many will say they missed far too much life by spending too much time working in their business. You can’t change it at that time. The change has to happen now and it can’t be postponed. Do you have it balanced?

An Upcoming Live Meeting Opportunity

Arlin Sorensen, CEO and founder of Heartland Technology Solutions and HTG peer groups, will be hosting a live meeting on March 24th for Microsoft as part of the 5W25 series on four plans to provide a well rounded look at life and business.

The plans we will discuss are:
- Business plan
- Leadership plan
- Life plan
- Legacy plan

Joining for the live meeting will be Jamison West from JWCS and Brad Schow from Compudyne. The event is code WES36PAL and it will be held at 9:00 AM Pacific that day. The session is titled Four Plans That Can Change Everything and that is exactly the potential outcome from the session.

If you learn to use these plans, you can change the result of your life and business. Without planning, you leave things up to chance and quite honestly have far less opportunity to achieve your dreams or succeed. We often spend a lot of time focused on our business plan but neglect the things that may be more important. Never forget your life will leave a record, a history and a legacy. Planning can help make sure those turn out as you would like.

Invest an hour and join me for this webcast. To register go to www.mssmallbiz.com/training and select the appropriate session. There are many other great sessions available as well. Hope to meet with you online that day!

The End of a Decade

Another year is ending but this is a rather important end of the year as it also is the end of a decade. Hard to believe we are already finishing the first ten years of the 21st century. It seems like Y2K days were only a short time ago, but here we are ready to enter the next decade. But before we go, it is time to stop and take advantage of the two opportunities that transition brings.

First we need to review the past year and evaluate our performance. I would also say we should take a little extra time and review the past decade. That will be challenging if you are anything like me and can hardly remember what you did last hour let alone over the course of the last 10 years. But looking back gives us so much perspective from which we can then look forward. We can learn much from that exercise. It can be a significant help in putting together a course of change, an opportunity to tweak things just a bit, or a validation that we should continue doing what we did this year into next year.

Here are some potential questions to ask:

What big things happened? Did they happen because you made a knowing, concerted effort to make them happen? Or... did they just happen?
What good things happened?
What bad things happened?
What was your biggest triumph?
What was the smartest decision you made?
What one word best sums up and describes your experience?
What was the greatest lesson you learned?
What was the most powerful service you performed?
What is your biggest piece of unfinished business?
What are you most happy about completing?
Who were the three people that had the greatest impact on your life?
What was the biggest risk you took?
What was the biggest surprise?
What important relationship improved the most?
What else do you need to do or say to be complete?
What lessons did you learn from these things?

Our second opportunity is to create a course for the new year. We get a fresh start, a chance to begin all over again. It is sort of like a new game. The buzzer has sounded on the last one, and now we can take the field again and start from scratch. I know it isn't quite that cut and dried, but you get my drift. It is a chance to make a difference in our direction and ultimately our success.

Consider these questions about the coming year:

Do you want to have more time?
Do you want to go places? With who? In what fashion?
Do you want to read more?
Do you want to learn new skills?
Do you want to spend more time with certain people?
Do you want to run a race? Climb a mountain? Learn a new language?
What kind of person do you want to be?
Who do you want to meet?
How much money do you want to be able to give away?
What would you like to be your biggest triumph?
What advice would you like to give yourself?
What is the major effort you are planning to improve your financial results?
What would you be most happy about completing?
What major indulgence are you willing to experience?
What would you most like to change about yourself?
What are you looking forward to learning?
What do you think your biggest risk will be?
What is one as yet undeveloped talent you are willing to explore?
What brings you the most joy and how are you going to do or have more of that?
Who or what, other than yourself, are you most committed to loving and serving?
What one word would you like to have as your theme?

The key is to stop long enough to do some meaningful reflection and review of how the year really was in 2009. Did you achieve your goals? Did you accomplish all you had intended? If not, what were the blockers? Put down on paper your evaluation - you won't remember it if you don't. And put down on paper your plan for next year. Share it with your spouse, your employees and others that need to be part of holding you accountable. It likely won't be accomplished if you don't share it broadly for accountabilty.

One of the most valuable things we can get from the past is lessons we learn, often the hard way. But if we don't record them we often have to learn them over and over and there is no sense in that. Once should be enough for any of us to learn hard lessons. So create a place to store those year end evaluations and reflections and review the learnings often. If you had a business plan for the year - that is the place to start. Which things were you successful with and which came up a bit short. That is important as you chart the course for the new year. If you had a leadership or life plan, you need to do the same with those. Make sure you evaluate how you did in comparison to the goals you set and note what you learned. Have the blockers been removed yet or do you need to find a way around them? There is so much you can learn by just stopping and evaluating.

And ultimately the question is how did last year impact my legacy plan? Was I intentional in what I did? Did I make any progress toward that what I want to leave behind? Legacy happens whether we plan it and work toward a plan or not. The question really is - do you want to control what your legacy looks like or are you content to just let it happen and not care the result? I believe we need to do a lot better job of being intentional about legacy and what we will leave behind for those that will follow.

You have an opportunity to chart a new year ahead. But before you do, make sure you stop and learn all you can from the past. We should never dwell on where we have been. But we certainly should not ignore the value of what we can learn from that either. I wish you blessing and success in 2010! Much of that happens is based on how well you prepare and plan. Then it comes down to EXECUTION!

The HTG Way Part III - Business Plans

Will Rogers said “Even if you’re on the right track, you’ll get run over if you just sit there”. We have to plan to take action. Underlying S.M.A.R.T. goals is the need for planning. In HTG we focus on four plans that we ask members to complete or update each year.
1. Business Plan
2. Leadership Plan
3. Life Plan
4. Legacy Plan

The first and foundational plan is a company business plan. This plan is targeted at capturing the key elements for the company for the coming year. HTG uses a version of the One Page Business Plan as a model, but members are able to use any plan methodology they prefer. The key is not what the plan looks like, but rather that there is a plan. This plan should serve as the basis for many of the goals that are set each quarter. If the goals don’t align with the plan (or one of the plans), then why is there focus being made on it.

There are five key elements to the one page business plan format which are important to address:
1. Vision – a graphical description of the business that answers the question “What are you building?” Your vision should describe what the business will look like in 3, 5 or 10 years. It should include the geographical scope, the type of business you will operate, product and service offerings and what customers you intend to serve. This is the “big picture” for your company.
2. Mission – is the statement of purpose for the organization and answers the question “Why does this business exist?” The mission statement should describe the reason this company exists in a sentence or less. This statement should be timeless and really give people a clear view into the purpose of the business over time.
3. Objectives – are a list of measurable results and desired outcomes. This answers the question “What will you measure?” While there is the potential for a long list here, it is recommended that this be a list of four to eight goals that must be achieved for the business to be successful. This should include KPI’s and other ways to measure success and to know goals have been met.
4. Strategies – define how business will be built and managed. They answer the question “How will you build and grow this business?” This should be a list of five to eight things the business must do extremely well over time to be successful. These are not typically short term or tactical activities, but longer term actions that will be done consistently over time.
5. Plans – are a list of work or tasks to be completed. This answers the question “What is the work to be done now?” In this section, list six to eight specific business building or infrastructure projects that must be successfully completed within the next 12 months in order to implement the strategies listed above. These are tactical activities that need to happen now.

Of course the plan by itself does not guarantee success. You need to review it regularly, create a scorecard for key areas of measurement, identify KPI’s to watch daily, evaluate and provide regular feedback to employees so they are aware of progress, utilize to do lists with dates and progress benchmarks to track activity, and communicate verbally and via written word progress on the plan.

One other area you may want to include in your business plan is your Core Values. These are statements by which your company will be governed. They don’t change over time but are the very core of how you will operate the business and how it conducts itself through relationships with vendors, customers, employees and the community. These statements help all parties understand how you intend to interact and engage with them and how you will do business. These should be very visible to all people inside and outside your company.

So What About the Economy

It is the main topic on every radio show, newscast, newspaper article - it is everywhere. And the best description I have seen for it is we have a "presscession" rather than a real recession. We really have not seen a significant impact in our customer base in the Heartland. I know some of you are from areas where it is very real, and I don't doubt for a minute that there is real pain in a lot of places. But doggone it, if the press would leave it alone things would get better. But they won't so we have to deal with it.

What do we need to do in a recession? Adapt and change. Here are a few thoughts for consideration.
1. We need to evaluate how our cash leaves and enters our company. Can we cut some outgo or speed up some inflow? We need to watch cash because he who has it will win. Cash flow is a critical thing to take care of. Watch the A/R and keep it collected. Cut back where it makes sense. Evaluate how the money flows.
2. Guard your credit. It is a lot easier to lose it than get it so manage it well. Don't miss any payments and take good care of those relationships. Once you lose it the struggle to get it back will be difficult. It is important to realize that this will be an issue during 2009 and it is time to prepare now before it gets worse.
3. Reinvent or at least re-evaluate. In the IT business we have to do this routinely to survive, so there is no better time that a difficult one to see what needs to be changed. There are likely things that need to go, and new things that need to be added. Think carefully about your business and what should continue to be part.
4. Get outside the box. Don't let the norm be the norm - look outside your comfort zone and consider all options. You can't allow the rut to keep you on the wrong path. Creative thinking and planning is key.
5. Plan carefully. Planning is always important but never more important than when times are tough. You need to make sure you have a solid plan and your team understands.
6. Execute. There is never a time that execution shines more brightly. You need to focus on excelling at how you do things, and make sure you do the right things right every day.
7. Do the basic blocking and tackling well. Now is the time to make sure you are consistent and practice the basics. No need for fancy footwork now - just keep doing what is tried and proven and do it better than the rest.

Difficult times are opportunities. Many will struggle, some will fail, but for those who are ready and execute - you can leverage these times to make up ground quickly. Don't listen to the press - just follow your own gameplan and make it happen. HTG helps you focus on the right things. We are looking for a few good VAR's to round out our peer groups. If you are one of them go apply at www.htgmembers.com and become part of the HTG family.

Hello from Raleigh

This morning we begin our HTG3 meeting hosted by Worksmart in Raleigh. This is our first meeting of 2008 for the group, and I am excited to see what the planning looks like for 2008. Their business plans are due today, and this begins the accountability for the year ahead. Is your plan done? Have you put it on paper? We need to have things documented and more importantly shared with others that will hold us accountable and inspect what we do. We perform better when someone inspects us. It is a true fact. Who is your inspection parter? Who holds you accountable? Without that you are likely to grow much more slowly and be much more of a lifestyle than growth partner. Do you want to grow? Find someone who will hold you accountable to goals for your business, your leadership and your life.

Bringing in the new year

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Here is comes! 2008 has rolled into town and we are now given the opportunity to start fresh. The score is 0-0 today. All of us are on the same level. Are you determined to be more successful in 2008? One of the ways that happens is by planning. Are your plans written yet for 2008? HTS has completed our company business plan and now we are in the second stage which will be to map employee committments to the company plan. I call that a personal leadership plan. It is simply a list of goals and objectives with action steps and accountabilities that describe how you will fulfill your role in your company this year. If you are a business owner you may think you are exempt. WRONG! As the leader you need to set the standard in how to plan and be accountable. You set the standard for all others to follow. Too many owners feel they are given a pass because they pay the bills. That is a very poor way to lead. Put on paper how you will lead your company to achieve the business plan goals you set. Don't take the easy way out. Put a line in the sand, write down your committments, and then EXECUTE agains them. That will change how your employees think and act. This first few weeks of the new year is the perfect opportunity to really LEAD and to take your company to a new place in 2008. Remember that if you do what you did last year, you will likely get what you got last year. I hope you will set your sights on something greater and get after it now, not later.