Why a Red Gucci Purse is Totally Part of Strategic Planning

You might be asking yourself, “What in the world does strategic planning have to do with a Red Gucci Purse?” My answer to that would be EVERYTHING!  

It’s the beginning of the year. You’ve updated your strategic plan, including your 2017 goals, and are getting back to business at hand. This is great, but how do you keep focused on achieving those goals while keeping everything else going? And for multi-step goals, at what point do you claim success?

If you’re a driven person, as I know many of you are, you are likely to keep setting new goals and driving for more without stopping to take a breath and acknowledge your accomplishments. This forward momentum, no matter how impressive, will inevitably lead to burnout.  I’m going to help you avoid this by introducing you to my ‘Gucci Purse’ rewards program.

For those of you who have participated in my Own Your Future Strategic Planning process, you know that Step 2 -Inspiring Future - includes establishing major milestones. Milestones are significant accomplishments that give your business a big lift.

While milestones are good, hard driven people tend to keep moving the goal line. It is great to keep driving - but you need to refuel your tank before moving on. In order to push myself to achieve, I like to have a physical reminder or memento.  The personal reward I am currently working to earn is a Red Gucci Purse, which I will treat myself to when I’ve completed the professional recording of my No More Feast or Famine webinar series. I found an image online for the purse I want and taped it to my milestone timeline, right below the webinar series recording date. The Red Gucci Purse will serve as a visual reminder to me that I focused, persevered and made that milestone happen. Even after the recording, there will still be tons of work to be done to market and distribute the webinar series. But for me, recording the webinar series represents a major milestone. The reward will help propel me forward to take those next steps.  

Not everyone’s reward needs to be a pricey gift. Other ideas are treating yourself to a day off, getting a massage, or taking a trip. The idea is that you stop, acknowledge your hard work and celebrate. Identifying the reward-worthy point can be tricky. For example, you may set a milestone to secure a new type of client. Do you get the prize when the client says yes, when you start the work, or when you get paid for it? For complex multi-step projects, consider identifying a critical step in the process that feels like the biggest hurdle.

I’d love to hear about which milestones you plan to celebrate and how. What’s your ‘Red Gucci Purse’?  

Why I Have Double Vision and Think Your Business Should Too

In my strategic planning work, I’ve found that a grand long-term vision like: ‘putting your tiny town on the world map’ is wonderful for inspiring your team to persevere through challenging times. I like to think of this long-term vision as your “When It’s All Said and Done” (WIASD). However, though inspiring, your WIASD may lack the specificity to guide your team members’ immediate efforts. It may also fail to provide a much needed near-term fix to fuel everyone’s momentum. This is where a near-term vision or an “Amazing Not Too Distant Future” (ANTDF) can help.

At any point in time, every business has a certain amount of calm or chaos going on with respect to it’s people, profits, and products or services.  The “Amazing Not Too Distant Future” is the next level of better for this combination of things. The ANTDF is not a final destination, nor is it an achievement in a single point in time. It is a new norm that remains constant over a given period of time, perhaps months, quarters or even a few years. When it is achieved, a new ANTDF is needed.

For example:

Let’s say that your business is booming. While that’s great, you didn’t anticipate sales going so well and as a result your staffing levels aren’t adequate to get the work done. This leads to lots of folks working lots overtime to get the promised work out the door and to the customer. This overtime is negatively impacting employee morale and eating into your profits. On top of that, Quality Control is catching a higher rate of product defects, which requires rework to fix the issues!

In this situation, your ANTDF might be to: ‘Maintain average monthly revenue while increasing profitability by 2%, improve employee morale by two points and return to prior quality levels.’  We aren’t working on strategy for getting there yet, just setting an aspiration for an “Amazing Not Too Distant Future” - a next level of better for your people, profits and products/services.

On the other hand, if your business vision statement is only about the achievement of a new steadier business state, you may miss the early steps necessary to make the grand, legacy-leaving impact that you know your business is meant to make.  You don’t have to know the strategy yet for how you are going to get there. When you simply have a compelling, far-reaching legacy you’d love to leave through your business, you begin noticing opportunities that would have otherwise been invisible to you.

As if that’s not reason enough, a double vision is helpful for your staff. You likely have some employees who are predominantly interested in understanding near-term targets and others who are at their best when they understand and are in tune with the organization’s long-term vision.

When you hold a double vision, you get the focus and momentum of a near-term vision as well as the opportunity-leveraging and deep inspiration of a long-term vision.  This promotes a more fluid and energetic environment for you, your employees and your organization.