| 1. |
Goals – review past goals. Did you achieve them? Were you close? Were they realistic as you look back on them? What stopped you from attaining them? Can you control these factors heading forward? Do the goals need adjusting, re-working or scraping altogether in favour of a new goal? |
| 2. |
Objectives – Look back at your objectives and ask yourself were they clear, measureable and attainable? Were they specific? Did everyone understand the objective? Objectives need to be refined sometimes, ensure that other employees have input into the objective setting stage. |
| 3. |
Strategies – analyze where you are today and where you wanted to be last year or two years ago. What has changed? Were your previous plans carried out to completion and did they bear fruit or die on the vine? If they died, why did that happen, who was championing the strategy and was it a team decision to abandon or switch strategies? When was the last time you had a strong strategic brainstorming session with your team? |
| 4. |
Planning – Look at the results of your previous planning to determine if all the correct steps had been laid out in the correct order to accomplish the strategic direction and objectives. A well laid out plan will resemble a model, and if you have ever built a model, you know that if the foundation isn’t laid out properly in the beginning it doesn’t support the rest of the pieces. |
| 5. |
Actions – Ensure that your action plans are detailed, there is ownership and accountability involved and there is a time frame during which the actions need to take place. Each action should be evaluated after its completion to determine its effectiveness before proceeding, otherwise as mentioned above, the foundation suffers. |
