Jean Roberts

Always express your vision in practical terms – as ‘short-term achievable goals’ – with a set of annual performance indicators, measures and targets for each goal.

Each SME will have interesting and sometimes challenging decisions to make, and mostly these decisions will relate to the best use of their time, money, suppliers, connections, space.

There is nothing more exhausting than uncertainty – and the benefit of this level of planning is to address uncertainty.

Identifying a range of Business Performance Indicators – and extending each to measures and targets – is an investment of your time, and the return on this investment will be Clarity (Q1), Timeframe (Q2), Choices (Q3), and Flexibility (Q4).

As with most business methods and systems, the process begins with by developing your own logical sequence, and here’s one that I’ve followed in my micro-business through the past 25 years. Consider and adapt it for your own use.

Q1: What is your core business?

- Clarity

Whether your business is well established, new, or still in the planning stage – you’re wise to have a vision for the future, and best advice is that your vision reflects what you currently think of as ‘core business’:

CORE business is what you MUST do. This is your bread and butter!
– your available resources should be invested here: if you specialise, you are more likely to be seen to fill a specific gap in the market, and provide an immediate, practical benefit to your customers, clients or service-users

NON-CORE business is what you MAY do. These are options!
– products or services you should only attempt if and when you have or can attract the necessary resources: and they should not detract from your core business

NO-GO business is what you MUST NOT do. This is what you stay away from! They include markets, products and services that you do not attempt: they have the potential to undermine your speciality, confuse your established market and customer- base – and erode you resources.

Your vision needs to focus on customers, clients or service-users: therefore express your core business in terms of benefits to your customers, clients or service-users.

An example from my own experience. My major areas of business through the past 25 years are:

• project development, management and evaluation – incorporating submissions, grant applications, tendering and outsourcing, strategic and business planning, service development in the SME and nonprofit sectors,
• governance, management and delivery of services in nonprofit organisations, and
• increasing organisational effectiveness and individual job satisfaction – incorporating left- and right-brain orientation in SME and nonprofit sectors.

These are closely related and are linked by my need to communicate with customers, clients or users of my services and products.

Therefore, my core business is communication.

Each of my three major areas of business involve separate clients, activities, language/jargon, methods, systems, strategies, tools, packaging, delivery, etc.

However, each requires communication of:

• best practice,
• compliance,
• ideas,
• information,
• marketing and
• options, checklists,
• organisational responsibilities,
• promotion,
• questions,
• strategies, and
• tools.

Each of these three areas of business relies on specific content, appropriate methods and a range of its own products and services.

It’s at the ‘range of products and services’ that my core business is most easily identified, because I’m concentrating on – and communicating – immediate practical benefits.

Think of a retail outlet – their core business is not what they sell, it is service!

Q2: what is your vision for your business for the next year?

- Timeframe

Your starting point in addressing these questions:

• What’s the current situation in my business in measurable terms – as at today?
• What’s the desired situation in my business in 12 months’ time – in the same measurable terms?
• What’s the gap – in the same measurable terms – between my current situation and my desired situation?

Q3: How will you measure progress against your declared vision, ie the gap between your current and desired situations?
- Choices

In order to plan your ‘Project Gap-Fill’, you need to identify a number of Business Performance Indicators, which must be appropriate to (i) the nature and size of your business, and (ii) the quality of your core business.

Options include:
a)first-time customers, clients or service-users
b)repeat customers, clients or service-users
c)sales or confirmed orders
d)income within key categories
e)costs within key categories
f)profit or loss
g)market-share
h)staff turn-over
i)number and range of products or services
j)business methods and systems
k)equipment – age, cost of maintenance, in need of replacement
l)supplier reliability and performance

Before choosing options for your Business Performance Indicators – a maximum of ten is recommended – identify the valuable progress-related information that is possible from each Indicator, and make sure each is easy to monitor.

Q4: What are your short-term achievable goals in each of your selected measures?

- Flexibility

This stage requires you to state measurable targets against each of your selected Business Performance Indicators. The basis for your measurable targets is the gap between your current and desired situations for each of your selected Business Performance Indicators – in other words, what are your targets for improvement against each of your selected measures?

The more precise and measurable, the more chance to:

1. set meaningful and appropriate goals,
2. make appropriate choices to move from current to desired outcomes, and
3. have a proper basis for evaluation.

The more you precisely measure, the better you can know:

1. if you are on the right track,
2. if you have been successful, and
3. what should be changed if you are not successful.

Any statement of the desired situation should tell:

1. what result is to be achieved – ie targets ,
2. when the result will be achieved – ie schedule,
3. who or what will show the results, including anticipated cost/income – ie responsibilities and tools/methods, and
4. what criteria will measure its achievement – ie measures, and
5. under what conditions it will be measured and by whom.

Q5: Who does what, how, when and at what cost?

This is the crucial stage of your planning, because it brings you face-to-face with your available resources.

Answer each of these questions in turn:

• What do I or others need to do to achieve these targets/goals?
• How do we do it?
• When and where will we do it?
• How long will it take?
• How much will it cost?
• How will we manage and measure effectiveness – and most importantly, cost-effectiveness?

Be assured that ‘effectiveness’ is different to ‘achievement’: remember that is not necessarily progress!

If you can’t answer these questions adequately, then return to Q3 to check that you have control over the Business Performance Indicators and Measures, and that you have – or have access to – the information required to measure progress against your scheduled targets.

You’ll find this tool fully explained in:

• My 2008 book, One Man Show – the smallest of small business – Section 3: Two different – and useful – business life-cycles,