Day 21 of 31 days to Creating Your Inspiring Personal Plan for 2012
In Step 20, you created your hypothesis of the five or six strategies that you will be implementing in 2012 in order to make your Vision become an accurate depiction of how you are currently living your life, as opposed to merely an aspirational statement.
Now, you need to test the validity of those strategies. All of the remaining steps in the planning process are predicated on your strategies so it is critical that they be at least a good starting point. The following five part test should provide you with additional confidence that you come out of this step with strategies that will accelerate your success in 2012.
1. Are your strategies really strategies, or are they really more like tactics?
You will have faster success in 2012 if you enter the year with a strong strategic plan, as opposed to merely a list of detailed things to do (this comes later in the process). Here is an example of the difference between these two concepts. “Committing to opening a Twitter account” is a tactical step. “Leveraging the power of social media to increase my personal brand recognition” is strategic.
When we are only tactical in our thinking, we tend to lunge from tactic to tactic. When we are strategic, we are smoother and faster. The tactics we use support a strategy, as opposed to being a series of disjointed efforts.
If any of your strategies are more tactical in nature, tweak them now by taking them to a high level.
2. Do your strategies make great use of your strengths?
In Step 4, you received input on your personal strengths from people you trust. You will accelerate your success when you follow strategies that make good use of your strengths.
Let me give you a simple example. I am not a good singer, and that is being kind to myself. :) Perhaps I could learn to be a good singer, and maybe someday I will decide to do that. But singing is certainly not a current strength. Pursing any strategy that was somehow dependent on my singing will only slow me down.
Do your strategies make good use of your strengths? If not, what tweaks can you make to one or more of your strategies to make better use of your strengths?
3. Are your strategies consistent with regard to your planning assumptions for 2012?
In Step 5, you identified your planning assumptions for 2012. Hopefully, you then tweaked what you identified through my sharing with you my own planning assumptions for 2012 the planning assumptions you have made.
Let me show you an example of a consistency problem. Let’s assume that one of your strategies was to better utilize social media to accelerate success in your business. Let’s also assume that one of your planning assumptions was that you were going to have to devote more time in 2012 to caring for an aging parent. All other things being equal, there seems to be an inconsistency between this strategy and this assumption.
Be intellectually honest with yourself. Are there similar inconsistencies with regard to any of your strategies? If there are inconsistencies, tweak your strategies so they are fully compatible with your planning assumptions (or reframe your assumption).
4. Do your strategies capitalize on the opportunities you have identified?
In Step 6, you identified opportunities that you see in areas that are important to your success. Do the strategies you identified take advantage of these opportunities? For example, let’s assume you identify a consulting need in the market for “revenue growth consulting” (assuming that the consulting market is somehow important to you). Do any of your strategies involve going after this market opportunity?
Do your strategies take full advantage of the opportunities that you identified? If not, what tweaks can you make to one or more of your strategies to take better advantage of the opportunities you have identified?
5. Are your strategies mutually supportive, or at minimum, not conflicting?
For your strategies to be truly empowering, they must be synergistic. Conflict between strategies will have you quickly shying away from effectively implementing.
If you see any conflict between the strategies, adjust the conflicting strategies to eliminate the conflict.
6. Are you set of strategies empowering and uplifting for you?
When you have the right set of strategies, you should feel empowered and inspired to get on with implementing.
If you are not feeling empowered and inspired, it is most likely because you have one of the preceding five problems with your strategies. Cycle back through the previous five until you find what is holding you back from feeling wonderful about your strategies.
Ready for some good news? You are only one step away from assembling your 2012 Plan for presentation to your Board. Tomorrow, we will create one SMART Goal for each of your strategies. SMART Goals is a process that is used to create a road map for your daily, weekly and monthly actions to implement your strategies. Then on the follwoing day, you will bundle up your plan using some templates I will share with you so as to easily give your plan a polished look and feel. You will then just let your assembled plan sit for a couple of days, as if aging a great wine, before sending it off to your Board. (Those celebrating the Christmas holiday will likely be plenty busy on Saturday and Sunday and not overly interested in working on their plan.)
I am very, very confident that your Board will be impressed with the thoughtfulness and practicality of your written personal plan for 2012. Equally importantly, you are well on your way to demonstrating to yourself that you have the discipline and focus to complete a very substantive personal plan, and to do so within one month. Congratulations!
When you have completed Step 21, you can access Step 22 here tomorrow. If you want an anouncement every time a new step is posted, you can sign-up – to the right – to receive new steps by either RSS feed or email.
Please note: If you have arrived at this step first, it is not too late for you to join other high performers who are collaborating to follow the bite size steps that are unveiled here every day. Get started here.
This blog post was written by Dave Carpenter. Dave is a prolific author, inspiring speaker, and well-known consultant to professional service firms. Besides writing regularly for this blog, Dave’s writing can be seen in leading business and personal development publications. Dave is also the leader of the Accelerate Success mentoring program where he mentors high performers in a unique program designed to do great things for the favorite charity of each participant. If you are (1) a high performer who believes you still have untapped potential, and (2) passionate about a favorite charity, you may want to learn more about this powerful program. You can also follow Dave on Twitter, on Facebook, and/or on Google+.
