Prozac for angels

Strategic management is an ongoing process that assesses the business and the industries in which the company is involved; assesses its competitors and sets goals and strategies to meet all existing and potential competitors; and then reassesses each strategy annually or quarterly i.e. regularly to determine how it has been implemented and whether it has succeeded or needs replacement by a new strategy to meet changed circumstances, new technology, new competitors, a new economic environment., or a new social, financial, or political environment Most people work hard for a lifetime, yet the majority (65%) can’t stop working at retirement age because of financial reasons. Let’s be honest with ourselves. You’ve been working at your career or profession for decades, but how financially free are you?

What would happen if you stopped working for six months? What about twelve months? If you’re like most people you’d be in serious financial trouble.

Strategy at Different Levels of a Business

Strategies exist at several levels in any organisation – ranging from the overall business (or group of businesses) through to individuals working in it.

Corporate Strategy – is concerned with the overall purpose and scope of the business to meet stakeholder expectations. This is a crucial level since it is heavily influenced by investors in the business and acts to guide strategic decision-making throughout the business. Corporate strategy is often stated explicitly in a “mission statement”.

Business Unit Strategy – is concerned more with how a business competes successfully in a particular market. It concerns strategic decisions about choice of products, meeting needs of customers, gaining advantage over competitors, exploiting or creating new opportunities etc.

Operational Strategy – is concerned with how each part of the business is organised to deliver the corporate and business-unit level strategic direction. Operational strategy therefore focuses on issues of resources, processes, people etc.

I often get many people emailing me with questions such as ‘How do I write about personal topics?’, ‘How can I motivate people with my articles?’ and ‘How do I give advice without sounding preachy?’.

I usually try and answer the best I can, but the truth is that there are many different writing styles, and quite a few are appropriate for personal development articles.

After replying to a few of these emails, I decided that it would be useful if I tried to condense a few of my own techniques into an article so that many others can pick up a tip or two for their own writing. I also encourage you to add your own comments so that we can help build this into an even greater resource for budding bloggers and freelancers!

1. Use lists. I practise what I preach, and so this article will be in list format also. Lists are a brilliant format for relaying advice on the internet because they are appealing to the eye, they’re easy to skim and pick up chunks of knowledge, and they help give the article a good structure. By habit, you’ll try to keep the list items to a similar length, which will help make the experience more enjoyable for the reader.

A visit to the Digg.com homepage will show you how powerful lists are in capturing attention. At any one time I would expect 1/3 of the websites featured there to be lists. For the very reasons I gave above.

2. Speak about your own experiences. Try and capture a balance between making the article a biography, or including so few self references that the advice sounds arbitrary and distant. With experience (and possibly reputation) comes authority, which is incredibly important for readers of leadership articles. Anyone can dispense advice, but internet surfers will only sit up straight and listen to leadership authors whose words carry weight.

Think of it like personal branding. By reffering to experiences and events in your life, you’re helping to establish a credibility and loyalty that will suck your reader in. It helps to create a unique experience that they won’t find on an advice website like about.com.

3. My final piece of advice in this brief article is to keep your writing light and informal. Professional leadership bloggers have a skill at writing in a friendly and chatty style without looking like an amateur. They manage this in two ways. One reason is that what they have to say is well thought out and smart. Professional writers spend plenty of time planning and writing their article – often far longer than you’d imagine. The second reason is that they use tasteful humour to good effect.

You may want to look like the absolute authority on a subject, but let me assure you, the best way of going about doing that is not to sound like a lecturer. The best way is to relax, and appreciate that you have the confidence and security to not need to use long words to ‘convince’ your readers that you know what you’re talking about. Once you loosen up, your readers will respond, and you’ll start sounding more like a proffessional leadership writer.

A business plan guide is a great place to start when you are getting ready to write your first business plan. Perhaps you have found a book about writing business plans, or are following a template, but chances are, these materials will only focus on the steps necessary to create your business plan and will fail to point out the critical mistakes that most new business owners make. So let’s ignore the step-by-step tutorial for a moment and focus on the real world mistakes you need to avoid.

1. Don’t Put it Off.

Yes, writing a business plan can be a monumental chore. It’s easy to procrastinate while you focus on the more exciting processes of your business. Many new business owners will wait until the day before their scheduled meeting with the bank — and then frantically try to write a plan overnight. You can imagine the results.

Don’t wait until you have more time. There will never be more time. You need to clear your calendar for a week and make your business plan a top priority. Or if that isn’t feasible, schedule a certain period of time each day to work specifically on planning. No doubt you have heard the old saying: “If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail”.

2. Don’t Confuse Profit With Cash Flow.

Unless you have an accounting background, you are very likely to define the success of your business in terms of profits. A simple definition of Profit would be Sales minus Expenses equals Profit. But in the business world, profits do not equate to cash. Your profit formula does not take into account the amount of cash you have tied up in production costs for products that have not yet sold, or the customers who still owe you money for sales that have already been made. Your business can look quite “profitable” while your bank account is over-drawn.

Make sure your business plan includes a table that addresses cash flow. Ideally, you should detail the monthly cash flow for the first two years of the business and annually thereafter.

3. Don’t Fall in Love With Your Idea.
Too many business plans blabber on for pages about the “newness” and “uniqueness” of the idea. But the truth is, investors want to invest in people, not ideas. It is only the people who can execute the systems necessary to bring the idea to life.

Instead of waxing poetically about your business idea, focus your energy, and your reader’s eyes, on the ways you plan to implement this great business idea.

4. Don’t Succumb to Fear and Dread.

If you have never written a business plan, the process may loom like Mount Everest. But, like most new challenges, writing a business plan isn’t as hard as you have imagined it to be. You aren’t writing a doctoral thesis or the next great novel. If you have invested in a business plan guide, use it. You can easily find helpful resources such as books, software programs and templates. Remember, you eat an elephant one bite at a time, so start chewing.

5. Don’t Over Sell.

Skip the vague and meaningless business phrases such as “best ever”, “highest quality” and “unsurpassed customer service”. You will lose your reader’s interest and respect if you engage in hyperbole that isn’t supported by measurable facts. Remember that the objective of a plan is its results, which require tracking and follow up. Focus your goals on specific dates, management responsibilities, budgets, and measurable milestones. Think fewer words and more numbers.

6. Don’t Engage in One-Size-Fits-All

Business plans can have many different purposes and they should be written to reflect the specific purpose at hand. You may be using your plan to start a business, or just run a business better. Your purpose may be simply to sell an idea for a new business to one particular business partner. Your plan may be intended to secure a small business loan, or it may be needed to secure millions of dollars of venture capital. Each of these purposes would require different information, presented in different ways to meet the needs of different readers. Keep a picture of your intended reader firmly in your mind and your business plan will stay focused as well.

7. Take Off the Rose Colored Glasses
Optimism is a wonderful resource. Without it, a business owner would find it difficult to summon the energy necessary to launch a new venture.  However, this is not the time to engage in unbridled projections. If your company’s growth chart is based on an “industry average” of 15% annual growth, you should certainly be prepared to prove that assumption. When in doubt, be less optimistic.

By using a good business plan guide, and avoiding these common mistakes, you can prepare a plan that almost guarantees your business success. Good luck!