The future is the one thing you simply can’t ignore as a business founder. It doesn’t matter what the scale of the business is – Jeff Bezos is just as concerned about the future of Amazon as the owner of a local dry cleaner is about their business. It’s important to make sure you’re planning for a future that’s successful and sustainable for your business – ill founded plans for growth and development can cause bigger problems than no plans at all!
Today we’re taking a look at how you can make better plans for a better future for your business!
Devising a Strategy and Goals
One of the most important things your business can have is a strategy. First you need goals – a vision of what you want to achieve, and where you want to end up. Your strategy tells you how you’ll achieve these goals: what your principles are, where your red lines are, and how you make the major decisions you encounter.
This is vital because it ensures all your different decisions, big and small, are pulling together to create that future you want. If you take every challenge in isolation, as though it exists in a vacuum, and simply look for the most pragmatic solution there’s nothing to ensure they all add up to a coherent, well founded business.
Devising a strategy is a difficult task – it requires far sighted economic expertise, the ability to understand and predict both your customers and competitors and the ability to see into the future of your own industry – and it’s worth looking for help. If you search, many strategy consultancy firms are available to suit many different budgets and needs and they can offer some very welcome help to business owners who aren’t polymaths!
Poorly Structured Growth
For most businesses, some kind of growth will be part of those future plans, and growth is also one of the big risks if it’s not planned for well.
Growth is one of the areas you will need to address in your strategy to ensure your future is successful. Lay down some checks and balances to prevent you rushing in when you’re not ready – checks on the expected profitability of your new venture, on how you get your funding and what shape your existing needs to be in before you commit to growth. These can all help to ensure your growth is sustainable and won’t overbalance your business, truncating your future.