Plan“A goal without a plan is just a wish.”
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
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Profit and Loss AnalysisBasic financial tool to be used as a powerful weapon for business operational piloting.
"Here is where the buck stops"…literally! If your business is not providing enough revenue to cover the resources needed with a surplus, business action is long overdue. You need to go through the items that compound the profit and loss account of your business and improve them. My proposal is to identify your family of products and then present the P&L according to them. You might find already that there are significant differences and this will be useful for the first step of benchmarking. |
Benchmark Internal / ExternalCompare yourself to the best in class - internally and externally. The normal rule would be to compare your business to the best, understand what is missing to reach them and then manage the Gap, depending on your business strategy.
Never have as reference "average performance" even if that's the best you could aspire right now. If your business strategy would not request for more, in a very dynamic environment you need to know that there are other levels of performance to take into account. |
Create Roadmap for excellenceYou need to master not only "what you do" but also "how you do it". In a scale from 1 (worst) to 5 (best) where do your business situates itself? What make a business a 1 or a 5?
These are the basis to construct a roadmap and to start formalizing the milestones you need to achieve. |
Understand and align resourcesWhat do you need to reach your targets? Do you have the right people, tools, positioning, etc.? How can you support the costs of the transformation - can you do it alone or do you need to have external support?
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Identify projects, define KPI, targets and deliverablesHaving a target and resources, now we need to plan our path so that we can pilot our journey. During a project I've found to make the best use of relatively calm times - because there are some - to avoid being overwhelmed during the storms. So identify the milestones, what are the deliverables at all stages and try to keep a constant pace!
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