To ensure success, planning is critical for all areas of the business

In planning for the success of our business, or even our lives, we need to establish goals, plans to accomplish those goals, and also ways to measure our success or our progress toward reaching our goals. These goals can be grand, far-reaching dreams, simple short-term relatively easy to achieve intentions or anything in between.

Although we often think of our success in terms of finances, we must remember not to ignore the many non-financial achievements that are so important for our business, as well as for our personal sense of achievement and recognition. It isn’t just lots of money or material wealth, it may be recognition of accomplishment, or perhaps the knowledge that we are working toward and regularly achieving our goals. Although there may be many measures or defining factors of success, these elements, although not the only ones, definitely play a part in our view of success.

This is also the time of year when we start to look over the past and plan for the future. And this is an excellent time to start reviewing and possibly revising our goals and plans.

The first step for managing the success of our future is a clarification of our goals. Although I have suggested that not all of our goals should be financial, we certainly don’t want to ignore our financial goals. Depending on the business, those goals can be broken into weekly, monthly and annual targets. These goals can also include numbers and types of projects.