3 Strategies You Should Adopt in Your 2020 Planning

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As Coach Mike has mentioned several times, in Leadership Lessons From My Mother’s Death or Passion and Emotion May Be Destroying Your Business, passion is an uncontrolled emotion. We don't want to have to be in a position to make passionate decisions, especially in business. Good planning means accounting for all outcomes while we are in our natural state, operating in Quadrant II (one of Strategy), not Quadrant I (Crisis). Here are some strategies to follow to help you do just that:

  1. Adopt A Structure

    • Adopt an operating system which will aid you in creating best practices to enhance productivity and improve operations throughout your organization. Check out the book - Traction which a number of Trajectify clients have started to adopt as their planning structure.

    • Mike has  also been trained to work with you in the Business Builders Blueprint if you’re in one of his peer boards.

    • Use tools such as the Business Model Canvas to figure out elements of your various business models, when you come up with new ideas, or strategically tackle your projects with your team.

  2. Don’t Do it Alone

    “Many ideas grow better when transplanted into another mind than the one where they sprang up” -Oliver Wendell Holmes

    • Structured planning is a team effort, not only a responsibility for the CEO or leader. Start at the top of the plan - your vision and goals - and bring in your direct reports and their departments to help create, refine, and align all the various parts. Consider not only the structure of your plan, but the structure of your team to get this done. Delegate.

    • Join a peer advisory board. Like having a board of directors, you’ll grow your business with the advice, insights, support and accountability of others who are in the same position. You get the benefit of their perspectives and experience. Given they’re doing the same thing for their businesses, you’ll never feel alone.

    • Hiring a facilitator, often a business coach, brings outside-in, unemotional perspectives to help you grow and scale your business. They’ll bring experience and a structure to get your planning done. What’s best about using outside facilitation is that everyone gets a seat at the table, the CEO and management participate as equals given they don’t need to lead the process.

  3. Get Out of the Office

    • In our blog post Three Pillars of Effective Leadership: Insights From Experienced CEOs, we talk about the importance of getting out of the office and your normal routine. By changing up your environment you will get a renewed sense of clarity and can come back into your business with fresh new ideas.

    • Attend a leadership retreat, an opportunity to go offsite and do your planning, and also be surrounded by like-minded individuals who can share their insights. Our next Trajectify Leadership Retreat is Friday, November 15th, 2019. We welcome you to join us in moving your planning forward.

    • Have a company retreat. You’ll not only get a lot done off-site because of fewer distractions, but will also build a healthier team with closer bonds given the shared experience. Distributed teams have to do this, but it’s a best practice all companies should consider.

    • Take care of yourself before you take care of others and your business. Leave the office, put away the technology, and recharge your body and clear your mind before you embark on your mission to do some strategic and annual planning.