3 building blocks for a 2022 business plan
One thing in businesses year-to-year is consistent, having a plan for your organization is essential. Analyzing, adjusting, and perfecting that plan improves operations continuously as your business changes and grows. Uncertainty created by the pandemic is ongoing, making building a plan more difficult than in past years.
Using these three building blocks for the foundation of your plan takes some of the guesswork out of the process:
Know your influences and assumptions. Operational cycles repeat themselves in all organizations. That doesn’t mean change isn’t occurring. Looking back on the previous year’s plan can show what actually happened versus what was planned. What stayed on plan? What didn’t? And more importantly, why did things go off plan? Knowing where you went off track lets you avoiding making the same mistakes in the new year. If you are a start-up or early stage entity, or you’ve simply never created a business plan previously, identifying assumptions and what is influencing them will highlight potential problems and give direction when thinking about future strategy.
Consider the results. Real results are often very different from expected results. This isn’t necessarily because anything was done “wrong" but because there are many moving parts in every business. If a product or service oversold based on your old projections, it would make sense to plan more investment in that area in the coming year - assuming the marketing conditions have not changed. Take a close look at what cased your results to make certain they are real, long-term trends.
Create projections. Once you’ve looked to the past, it’s time to look forward. Projections can inform your circumstance and influence the outside support you get when looking for investors and shareholders. Projections also acknowledge known issues and anticipate circumstances to stay prepared. Always look at best-case and worst-case scenarios and work with different people across internal departments along with outside consultants to paint a realistic picture of the year ahead.
Starting to plan early, staying ready to respond and pivot, and using these three building blocks identifies your business’ path and progress happens faster.