Follow You Where?

Even our readers who aren’t familiar with the Bible can appreciate this analogy. The Bible speaks of a time when the Lord told Abraham to pick up his belongings and be led to a land of promise. Abraham picked up everything he had without any idea where he was going, and followed. The punch line is: You are not the Lord! You cannot ask your staff to follow you without communicating a plan and without direction.

A Business Plan is a necessary part of your business. It is not optional. It defines where you want to go as a business, and the needs and expectations of your staff as you all set out on this journey. Beyond these benefits, it prioritizes what you need to do and identifies milestones for achievement.

I have a wonderful and very successful client whose discipline shall remain unnamed. It really isn’t relevant. What is relevant is that he is CEO of a firm that does a lot of work with a particular public agency. Like most owners, he is a seller-doer. He sells the work and oversees its delivery back to his clients. On any given day, he deals with everything from lines of credit, to client meetings, new business endeavors, service delivery and mentoring. Sound familiar? It’s your life and mine. The problem is, as I explained to him, that he will go about the day-to-day requirements of running a business in the years ahead and never move any closer to the objectives he wants to achieve.

Do a Business Plan. You say, “But that takes too much time!” To which I retort, “Which is worse: spending 10 hours planning your future or waking up in ten years realizing you never achieved it?”

Learn from my client. He invested time in the development of a business plan. He defined priorities for himself and his staff because he finally focused on the larger goal: positioning his firm for an acquisition. Guess what? He’s well into his strategy and has grown his revenue and client base by 15% percent in what can only be called a bad economy. He didn’t do it because he was large and had a lot of resources. He did it because he took the time to plan for it. You can, too!

Karen Compton, CPSM. Karen Compton is principal of A3K Consulting (Glendale, CA), a business development and strategic planning firm specializing in the architecture, engineering and construction industries. Ms. Compton is also the founder of Industry Speaks™, a web-based business-to-business portal that connects AEC firms with experienced consultants, provides peer reviews of consultants, reports on key industry trends, and publishes expert reviews of professional courses and books. Contact her at kcompton@a3kconsulting.com.