Fail to Plan … Plan to Fail
I’m sure you’ve all heard about the SWOT analysis, S.W.O.T. SWOT: Strength, Weakness, Opportunities and Threats. I think SWOT is a great framework for getting your thoughts down on paper. You need to understand your strengths are, what are you doing really, really well, and where can you capitalize on those strengths to do ever better in the next year. You need to get that written down first, and I’ll get back to that in a second.
Your weaknesses come next. Be pretty critical, and look at seeing what you’ve done in the past and what you could’ve done a lot better. Then, see what opportunities are out there so that you can look and see if there is a potential boost in another profit center or if you can create another product. What can you do to make sure that you’re successful going forward and take advantage of those opportunities?
Lastly, are there any new threats out there or what are those threats out there? Is there a new competitor in the market? Is there a employee in your organization that might be sabotaging? Is there a client in your organization that might be sabotaging? All these things are in the “threats” category, and you want to look at that.
Once you have that all analyzed, you want to go back through and look at those strengths and see how you can capitalize on them and really be critical. One of the strengths I really pride myself on at my fitness center is our accountability which keeps our clients accountable to hitting the goals they want to achieve. One of the things that we always do is look at the accountability sessions and see how can we make them better and more relevant for our clients.
This past year, our trainers have come up with some really great ideas on how to do that. It all comes from making sure that you understand exactly where your strengths are and then where can you capitalize on them going forward.
Then, while looking at your weaknesses be very, very critical. What changes do you need to make to then get rid of those weaknesses in your organization and make them better? Your number one goal is to get rid of all those weaknesses that are in your organization and then obviously the opportunities. What is out there that you could potentially go after? Now warning here, this is not shiny objects. This is not squirrel [background squirrel chirping sounds] looking like that. You don’t want to do that. You want to look at real relevant opportunities that fit with your model and your business. You don’t want to go off in too many different tangents because your strengths will then become your weaknesses and your opportunities will also become a weakness and it’s just going to blow up in the new year.
Then, of course, you want to look at your threats. Who’s out there? What’s going on? What could potentially derail you from getting to your goal? Now that you have all this planned out, you need to come up with some goals. So very simple, where do I need to be in 12 months? Where do I need to be in six months to reach my 12 month goal, three months, and then I love those 90 days because so much can happen in 90 days. Then you can break that down into monthly, weekly, daily goals. What are the activities that you need to do to drive results because that’s really what it’s about. If you’re doing things that aren’t getting a result, then why are you doing them in the first place? Is it just to be busy? I’m sorry but I just don’t want to be busy all the time. I want to be doing something that makes a difference and provides my employees with a business that they can be proud of as well.
So there are your planning tips and trick for this new year. Feel free to comment below, I’d appreciate that. You can write me as well at tom@tomjackobs.com. Feel free to visit my website and I have a ton of free stuff on there for you to view.
[convertkit form=5070479]
