The new year is just around the bend, and it is the time of year when business leaders like you think through opportunities to provision for growth in your business. Even though inflation, the need to find and retain talent, and rising payroll costs challenge you at every turn, you still envision significant moves that can produce profitable outcomes. You need a framework, discipline, and collective team engagement to build and execute a realistic plan for growth.
Often, entrepreneurial-minded business owners and executives face tough challenges and look to human resources consultants to help them plan and prepare for the future. With or without the move toward outsourcing human resources, the planning process itself takes internal focus and commitment from more than just the top leader if it is actually going to make a profitable impact.
You may need an experienced guide to help not just build a plan, but also to engage key leaders in the process. The HR Professionals at Achilles Group are adept at helping business leaders with the strategic planning process that also expands the team’s capabilities and capacity. We call this work provisioning for growth.
Here is a sample of an Achilles Framework for Priorities, Planning and Execution that may be useful to include in your efforts to provision for growth.
Tips on Provisioning for Growth: Priorities, Planning, and Execution:
Goals & Execution
Execution is the Ultimate Challenge: Why?
- We lack focus on strategic goals either because the goal is not clear or because there are too many goals.
- We fail to articulate why it matters both for individuals and for the business.
- We don’t know what each of us must do to achieve the goal in terms of day-to-day activities.
Working on The Business (WOTB)
- We must define for ourselves and our team what it means to work inthe business and to work on the business.
- Make provision to work on the business to drive your priority goals in a disciplined manner.
Narrow the Focus
- The first requirement as leaders is to narrow our focus.
- A narrow focus is not only hard in the beginning, but is hard to sustain as leaders are always drawn to new ideas.
- We align our team’s energies with the focus and watch for tendencies to drive in multiple directions.
- While innovation is important, without focus our team cannot succeed.
- Leaders must learn to say “no” or “not now” to new ideas until the results on the strategy have been achieved.
- And, even when saying no or not now, it is still important to capture these ideas on a “Parking Lot” list for future front burner consideration.
Choose the Right Air
- Focus on less so your team can achieve more. Select one (or at the most, two) extremely important goals.
- Do not try to significantly improve everything all at once.
- If you choose the right AIR item, it opens up resources and opportunity to pursue more improvements.
- Make it clear to the team that this is the goal that matters most.
- Failure to achieve it will make every other accomplishment seem secondary—or possibly even inconsequential.
Define a Finish Line (X2YxW)
- Deceptively simple as this may seem, we as leaders often struggle to translate our strategic concepts into a single “from X to Y by When” finish line.
- Each Air goal must contain the X2YxW format; a date by which a measurable result must be achieved.
- Once the finish line is established our team gains tremendous clarity.
Keep a Compelling Scoreboard
- Effective scoreboards tell us at any moment if we are on track to achieve critical goals.
- We must regularly and frequently be able to collect the data and update the scoreboard.
- The scoreboard helps us stay accountable.
- Compelling scoreboards motivate us as we see progress and know that our efforts make a difference (WIM).
Create a Cadence of Accountability
- With an effective scoreboard and regular review of action and result, we create a cadence of accountability.
- For results, our people and teams need relevant and timely feedback.
- Leadership requires that we regularly and frequently account to each other for our commitments.
- Establish communication channels specifically to account for actions that drive the lead measures.
Engage People and Teams to Drive Priority Goals
- Narrow the Focus
- Choose the Right Air
- Define a Finish Line
- Create a Compelling Scoreboard
- Create a Cadence of Accountability
Next Steps to Provision for Growth
- Align people and teams around key goals and compelling scoreboards to foster engagement.
- Define owners, drivers, key players, and balance workload and expectations.
- Set up milestone reviews and make adjustments.
The Achilles Framework to provision for growth which includes Priorities, Planning, and Execution offers a blueprint for those seeking expansion in the coming year, outlining critical tips for success. By emphasizing clear goal execution, working both in and on the business, maintaining a laser focus, choosing the right priorities, setting measurable finish lines, and establishing effective scoreboards and accountability measures, businesses can foster an environment conducive to growth.
As the new year beckons, it’s vital to align people and teams around key objectives and compelling scoreboards to foster engagement, define roles and responsibilities, and establish a framework for ongoing reviews and adjustments. In essence, without a disciplined framework for Priorities, Planning, and Execution, the ability to envision growth opportunities remains an elusive dream. The path to realizing those dreams lies in the structured approach and unwavering commitment outlined in this framework—a path that can transform aspirations into tangible achievements and chart a course towards a prosperous future.
The ability to envision opportunities
without a disciplined framework
for Priorities, Planning, and Execution
is just hopes and dreams…
