FRESHviews
RHONDA ABRAMS:
STRATEGIES
hasn’t in your life or your business.
List your goals. Begin by listing all your
goals. Don’t worry if you have lots of them.
Get specific. Put details with each goal,
especially numbers. Let’s say one of your goals
is to increase sales. List each product you offer
and set a goal of a specific number of customers
and income for each. Or, if your goal is to work
out, set a specific number of times you’ll work
out each week and for how long.
Develop steps. Identify the steps necessary to achieve each goal. For instance, to attract
more customers, you’ll need to increase marketing. To work out more, you may need to join a
gym or get a new pair of running shoes.
Estimate money and time. Put a dollar
figure next to each step. And estimate how
much time it might take.
Estimate people. Figure out who will be
responsible for each step, especially in your
business or in family goals.
Prioritize. By now, you’ve got a list that
would take much more money, time and
resources than you have. So, prioritize your goals
and steps. Don’t try to do everything; eliminate
some goals altogether rather than attempting
all partway.
Write an action plan. Schedule the
month, week or day you’re going to take action
on each step and what that action will be.
Get consensus. Discuss the plan with all
affected parties (employees, family members).
Are they willing to commit to it?
Once you’ve developed your annual plan,
you’re on your way to achieving your goals and
being a success in 2007! C
Rhonda Abrams’
newest book is
Successful Business
Research. For more
tips, see www.
PlanningShop.com.
Making magic
Planning for the
new year
IF YOU’RE LIKE ME, you’ve got big hopes for
2007. But with many things that will demand
your time—your business, family, community,
your own health—how do you make sure you
achieve the things you want this year?
The best way is to develop an annual plan
to set goals, priorities and action items. Remember Rhonda’s Rule: You can’t reach a goal you
haven’t set.
Developing a plan is a way to step back
from the daily grind, set goals and think through
the best strategies for reaching those goals. As
important, it helps you establish priorities and
decide what not to do this year. That enables
you to better use your limited resources of time
and money. Here’s how to do it.
Keep it real. The key to a successful annual
plan is to look at where you’ve been, where you
want to go and the best way to get there.
Look at the past. Before going in new
directions, evaluate what’s worked and what
NO BUSINESS operates for any
length of time without running
into problems, some of which
may even threaten its survival.
There are occasions when you
may feel as if you need to pull a
rabbit out of a hat. According
to adviser, speaker, author and
magician Andy Cohen, that’s
exactly what you should do.
In his new book, Follow the
Other Hand (St. Martin’s Press,
2006), Costco member Cohen
uses magic to drive home the
message and does it in en-
tertaining fashion. Through a
fictional business owner’s meet-
ing with a fabricated magician
named Merlin, secrets of busi-
ness success are revealed.
Here’s a look.
•Think differently—follow
the often-ignored other hand.
•Build trust—make the
audience (customer) part
of the act.
•Define a brand—create a
magical experience for clients.
•Bust barriers—remove the
obstacles to thinking differently.
Hold on to
your staff
•Discover your competitive
edge—find your unique magic.
To divulge the depth of the
secrets here would undermine
the enchantment of the book
(
www.followtheotherhand.com).
Special cards are provided to
IF YOU’RE LOOKING for a
New Year’s goal that will actually help your company’s bottom line, here’s one: Reduce
employee turnover.
The top reason employees
leave a company isn’t for more
money. “It’s because of poor
management,” says Cindy
Ventrice, a Costco member
and author of Make Their
Day! Employee Recognition
That Works (Berrett-Koehler,
2003). “Reduce burnout and
you reduce turnover.”
Taking steps to keep
employees around isn’t complex or expensive. Ventrice
PHOTODISC
offers these easy tips.
• Clarify and communicate
your company values and
goals. Employees can handle
challenges best when they
understand the purpose and
value of their work.
• Reward behaviors that
promote your organization’s
values and goals. Not only do
employees want to do work
that is of value, they want
to be valued for that work.
• Offer employees
control over how they
accomplish goals. The
worst burnout occurs in
jobs that have high respon-
sibility and low control.
Provide the assignment
and, whenever possible, let
employees decide how it
gets done.
Ventrice offers a simple
equation for the efficacy
of her advice: “One
enthusiastic employee working
eight hours will
accomplish more
than two burned-out employees
putting in
12-hour
days.” C
help you pull off a couple of
the tricks explained in its pages.
The tricks you then
come up with to
boost your business
will come from you
—so you can prove
your success is no
illusion. C
