In our last article we introduced the idea that personal goals don’t have to be exclusive of the goals you have for your business. In fact, to align your business vision with your personal vision is exactly what you want to do. Your personal goals can, and should, inform your business goals.
We reviewed how to create both your Personal Vision and your Business Vision in our last article. In this article we show you how to drive your business from where it is now to where it needs to be to ensure that the business will, in fact, produce both the personal and business outcomes you want.
We created a graphic that shows your Personal Vision, the ultimate goal, as the blue oval, and your Business Vision, the green oval. Now that you have those, it’s time to jump down to the Starting Point, depicted by the red oval.
The steps to align your business vision with your personal vision
The “playing field” on the graphic, the section between Starting Point and Business Vision, is the engine that drives you to the “touchdown,” your Personal Vision. In other words, the activities in the playing field will get you from where your business is now to where it needs to be to meet your personal and business visions.
The playing field includes your company’s Culture. Your Culture is made of up 3 components: your Purpose/Why, your Values, and your Beliefs. The playing field provides boundaries for your Goals, Strategies, and Actions because they should be consistent with your Culture. Every decision you make—hiring, firing, how you treat customers, and what products you offer, for example—should fit with your culture.
Here are the steps to align your business vision with your personal vision:
Create your Culture Statement – Since your Culture includes 3 components, your culture statement can take the form of a few sentences. Some business owners add a few bullets but it shouldn’t be more than a page at most.
1. Determine your Purpose/Why – this will probably be 1 or 2 sentences. This is the emotional core of why you do what you do, the driving force in your life. Click here for our Finding Your Why Worksheet.
2. Next identify your Values — about 5 to 7 values is good. Say, for example, you’ve identified ‘integrity’ as an important value and a prospect says he has to report all his costs to the government so he asks you to inflate your cost numbers to him. You either wouldn’t take him on as a client or at least you wouldn’t agree to his request.
We created a Personal Values Ranking Tool to help business owners identify their top values. Click to download it.
3. Identify your Beliefs – This is typically a statement of your worldview, the way you process what’s going on around you, a filter. Like ‘do unto others as you would have them do to you.‘ What are the structures or filters that you use to make sense of the world around you? At Inspire Results, we believe that ‘By helping small business we can change the community.’ It causes us to want to work hard to help business owners because we have a passion for the community as well. Another of our belief statements is ‘Serving others is the highest and best use of our company.’
Set your Goals, Strategies, and Actions – With your culture statement completed, you have a context in which to create your goals, strategies, and actions. These establish a line of sight between where you are and where you want to be.
1. Set your Goals – We start with ‘Long term’ goals (10+ years out), ‘Mid term’ goals (5 years out), then annual, quarterly, and monthly goals. You can plan backward from the future point of 5 or 10 years, or forward from now. For example, maybe you want to be a $50m company in 10 years. Or maybe you want to ‘Double production capacity’ in 5 years.
2. List your Strategies – Strategies are how you will accomplish your goals. To be a $50 million company, one strategy could be ‘Hire a strong sales manager’ or ‘Invest $10K in marketing.’ Identify the goals for the 10-year, 5-year, annual periods and for each quarter… you’re building toward that vision you’ve identified.
3. List your Quarterly Actions – The final step to align your personal vision with your business vision is for each goal you listed for the quarter, list the Actions necessary for someone in your organization to take to accomplish the goals. Include who’s going to do the action and by when, which provides accountability.
This can all be documented on your Single Sheet Business Plan. You can maintain and adjust along the way 4 times a year by updating your Quarterly Action Plan. You can download both from our website.
Truly, who cares if you’ve got a big business but your personal life is a shambles or not what you hoped for? Align your business vision with your personal vision. Making the connection between your work goals and your personal goals will insure they’re aligned and on target to give you and your family the life you want!
Join other small business owners at the Sept 23 Growth Plan Workshop and walk away with your plan, all on a single sheet of paper. In this 6-hour group setting with other small business owners and leaders, our coaches will spend one-on-one time with you, ask you the right questions, and give you the advice you need to walk away with a completed Single Sheet Business Plan and a 90-day Action Plan to jumpstart it.
Register here for the Growth Plan Workshop.
Thur., Sept. 23, 2021, 9 – 4 pm
Holiday Inn Indianapolis Airport, 8555 Stansted Dr, Indianapolis, IN 46241
