Happy New Year, data stalkers....
At the beginning of the year, we like to do our planning. It's part of a larger cycle of Plan, Budget, Do, Measure, Evaluate...repeat. We do this so we have a record of our progress over time. It helps us keep from re-inventing the wheel and makes it easier to explain to our outside stakeholders what we do and how we do it. It also drives our budgeting...that alone is worth its own essay at some point!
What's a plan? We know that conditions have a way of changing on us when we least expect it, so plans are flexible layouts of what we'd like to do, and sometimes how we think we will get there. Yes, we need to revise them sometimes. But for those of us with short attention spans and busy jobs and lives, a plan can help keep us on track toward the achievement of at least some of our goals for the year.
The first law of planning? Keep it simple!!
Start very small, very specific, and have regular checkups or benchmarks you can use to see how you are making progress. Especially the first year, give yourself a very short list of goals that you are pretty sure you can achieve. Why? Because you are practicing how to use these tools. You can get fancy once you have confidence from experience.
Parts of a Plan:
1. Mission/Vision or Values
2. Goals
3. Objectives
4. Proposed Measures
5. Timeline
1. Missions are the overall statement of what your organization or unit wants to accomplish. For example, you might have the following mission: "Orvileille will be the best maker of kettle chips the world has ever known." You might focus more on your constituents for a service organization: "Our clients will become fully proficient in atomic fusion for the home."
Visions are broad-spectrum pictures of where you want to go: "We envision a home fusion reactor in every home and office providing reliable low cost energy to our delighted customers."
Values...do I really have to tell you?? One suggestion, though: choose values you can live by, and live by them.
2. Goals are theoretical statements about what you are going to accomplish. They are specific yet vague. Save the specific measures for your objectives...
Here is a goal: We will significantly increase the market share of FusionReactors, Inc.
3. Objectives are more specific about how you will get to that goal: "Over the next three years we will use marketing on internet sites and on billboards to drive an annual 3% minimum increase in market share for our reactors." Specific, and achievable. And look how neatly that will drive your marketing budget discussion!
4. How will you tell you are successful at meeting your objectives and goals? Measurement. It's not so difficult. I would presumably have my market share data from prior years, or be starting from zero (nowhere to go but upward!). Let's call that a pretest measure or a benchmark. After I have put my marketing in place, I would measure the market share at the end of the annual cycle, and compare back. Hopefully, my graph trends upward...but if it doesn't you have an opportunity to try something else in the next cycle by amending your plan.
5. Many people forget the timeline section of their plan. It's helpful to have this section detailed out as much as possible, although almost always you will find yourself adjusting it mid-process. It is a nice record of how you organized your implementation efforts based on your planning.
Does all of this rock and roll, or are there parts you'd like more detail about?
See also this really nice entry on a related topic: http://www.alex-reid.net/2013/01/university-futures.html
