FROM THE BULL: Building Protection

What will our offices look like in 10 years time?

There are two time-frames that are important in your business – 90 days and 10 years. The 10 year timeframe sets the overall direction, mission and vision of your business – this should not change too much as it should encapsulate the reason for your business existing. The 90 day timeframe is a set of mini milestones that should help you to keep on track in relation to your longer term (10 year) goals. The 90 day milestones allow you to “straighten things up”, discard unproductive efforts, introduce new opportunities etc.

The competing organisational tensions between the 10 year and 90 day time frames is what keeps the business “honest” and on track. It is probably likely that most companies will have at least annual budgets and hopefully an annual business plan – this is the traditional approach and is useful mainly to “keep score”. However, an annual timeframe is both too long and too short to actually keep on top of your business.

Ask yourself – do you “really” have a 10 year goal/vision for your business (and is this clearly communicated through the organisation)? Further, are there specific actions that you intend to take within the next 90 days that you (and the company) are committed to achieving? Are these in line with your 10 year vision? A good way to start with this is to (a). determine where you want the business to be in 10 years; (b). then bite off some short term goals that will point you in that direction.

You can really get some traction if you instigate weekly dash-board style reporting which focuses on achieving the KPIs relevant to your 90 day goals. It is important that this is shared with your team. Believe me, it’s worth the effort – the business will gain momentum and your team will absolutely understand where it is heading and align themselves behind it.

Have a great week.
The Bull
(By the way, the Bull is not me, its our phantom writer who remains anonymous)

As always, big mountain skills or hospital bills to finish off the post with some human creative. So what are Travis Pastrana’s 10 year goals? Do we really care? We just enjoy the entertainment. If you haven’t already, then watch this film. (Has nothing really to do with this post. Its just good)
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Ete6ikzkes]

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 16th, 2009 at 2:05 pm and is filed under The Bull. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.