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Making plans helps you to avoid distractions

05-Oct-2011

At the beginning of every quarter we work with our clients to review their business execution progress.  We ask questions like:

  • Did we achieve our goals for last quarter?  
  • Did we execute our strategic priorities effectively? 
  • What did we start doing?  What did we stop doing?  
  • What valuable lessons did we learn?  

It takes discipline to STOP every quarter – to stop and debrief your strategic execution and learn from it.  But when you do, it makes your strategic planning and execution so much more effective next quarter – and each and every quarter that you repeat this disciplined process.

Then we review and update their strategic plans for the coming quarter.  We review the current operating environment, reset the goals, and write down the top strategic priorities (projects) that will address the key issues and move the business in its chosen strategic direction.

Don’t try to keep everything in your head!

On average, each of us has about 15 random projects (business or personal) buzzing around in our brains at any one time.  Unless we stop to prioritize our most important projects (focus on less to achieve more), and plan out the action steps (specific tasks with due dates), we tend to get easily distracted by all the incomplete things that swirl around in our heads. 

New research described in Psyblog validates the planning process.  Making specific plans actually frees our minds up to be more creative, and helps us to avoid distractions. 

Making specific plans means choosing and writing down our top priorities – and then breaking those down into the smaller sub-tasks we need to perform to complete each project. (We find that Business Execution Software is ideal to capture this information and drive implementation progress).

How clear are you (and your staff) on the specific action steps that need to be to taken in the coming quarter?  What about in the coming week?  Is it written down?  Where?


Stephen Lynch
Chief Operating Officer - Global Operations - RESULTS.com

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