Your Vision Statement is the basis of your entire journey – where do you want to go? Without the Vision, not only don’t you know where you’re going, but there is no reason to go in the first place!

There are as many opinions on how to do a Vision Statement as there are Vision Statements. Some “experts” claim it should be clear and concise, some claim it should be expansive and idealistic and others fall everywhere in between. I tend to fall in the expansive and idealistic camp, but that doesn’t matter, as long as you make it your’s, not someone else’s idea of what it should be.

A Vision Statement should stimulate the reader (as well as yourself), promote discussion, create possibilities, ask why not and communicate your belief in the Vision.

You can hardly make your Vision Statement too grand. If your company has been a million dollar revenue business for many years, why not make your vision to become a five million dollar business. So what if you don’t get there – this is one of the times when goal achievement is not necessarily the purpose. The purpose is the journey. What if you get to three million dollars, are you going to be disappointed – you just tripled your revenue.

Don’t make your Vision to plain or analytical, think big, go big, explore, create and show your passion. If you’re not excited, how can you expect the reader to be excited, have your desire or passion? Have fun, be wild; the time for cold, hard analysis is not when writing your Vision Statement.

The Vision Statement can be the most difficult part of the planning process, especially for those businesspeople that worry about what others may think – forget them, go for it!

Use powerful words, strong adjectives to describe your dream. Start with the five W’s – Who, What, Where, When, Why (and How). The answer to those questions will form the foundation to formulate your Vision.

Put your Vision on paper, stay with it for awhile, then go back and edit it, you may be surprised to find that you decide to do something more exciting that you originally thought.

There are lots resources for writing and formulating a Vision Statement – many are free – go find them and get started today!

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We have just added a Cash Flow Projection Tool to the Resource Library, Tool section. This will help you develop your Cash Flow Forecast. It is simple to use and provides powerful information to assist you in running your business, please download this free tool today.

Using the roadmap analogy from Part 1 of the Planning Series, how can you start the journey if you don’t even know where you’re at?

Benchmarking is a very effective tool for knowing exactly where you’re at. Benchmarking has several meanings and can be used in number of manners.

Some companies benchmark themselves as a starting point for internal process improvement or profit improvement. Other companies benchmark themselves in relation to an industry or to national, regional or local competition.

This latter benchmarking is the kind of benchmarking I’m going to discuss. Benchmarking your company against similar style, similar sized businesses on a national, regional or local basis has many benefits:

 Identifying areas of concern you weren’t aware of
 Comparing yourself versus your competitors
 Providing realistic goals and objectives
 Indicating necessary strategies
 Helps dictate tactical plans
 Identify and rectify problems
 Development of a process for continuous improvement

In one instance a recently purchased sign company was carrying high levels of inventory because the previous owner told the buyer to keep it at that level. The new owner was benched marked versus his local and regional competition and it turned out that the inventory levels were almost ten times as high as the competition.

This information prodded the new owner into selling off over 85% of his inventory (at a profit – although a small one) and he gained over $350,000 of cash from the sale of the inventory. He would have never known (or found out too late) that his inventory levels were a problem without benchmarking.

This type of benchmarking drives a stake in the ground and says “We are here; this is where we will start our journey”. It will help determine your roadmap for the rest of your journey.

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Lean Administration - B. Wiegand & P. Frank

Interest in lean has spread beyond the manufacturing to administration processes and to all kind of service businesses. The authors have shown how to introduce lean thinking into non-manufacturing areas including very complex enterprise wide processes.

In volume one they show how to understand the different workflows, map them, identify work elements and how it is possible to build and spread lean administrative processes throughout the enterprise.