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A vision statement is not meant only to be framed and hung up on your office wall. It's a statement that is meant to drive you every day, every month, every year towards achieving it. It is meant to inspire you when the going gets tough and energize you when you cross each milestone in your journey towards achieving the vision. This is possible only when you make actionable plans that are clearly aligned towards the vision you have set for yourself.
Top down approach is critical to ensure alignment
Staying with the thought we discussed in the earlier article on vision statement (Click Here), lets say you now have crystallized where you want to be in 2024 - 10 years from now. The next step is to make a long term plan, with specific and measurable targets that you want to achieve 3 years from today. This will be the first major milestone that tells you whether you are on track to achieve your vision. From here will flow your annual plan for the next year and from there will flow your plan for the coming quarter and the next month. Going top-down is absolutely critical to ensure that your short term plans are entirely consistent with the long term plan, which is consistent with your vision.
Working through one example
Lets take one example from the 4 vision statements we discussed in the previous article and work through how this should be drilled down into long and short term plans.
Example 2 : Kalpavriksh Financial Solutions will be the most successful independent financial advisory firm in the state of Rajasthan serving over 10,000 families with a 90% plus satisfied client base.
Let us say that Kalpavriksh today has one office in Jaipur, no branches anywhere else and serves 600 families in Jaipur. Kalpavriksh's proprietor, Ashish, is an ambitious young man and clearly has his eyes set on a business far bigger than what his current scale can naturally grow into over the next 10 years.
From his vision statement, there are a number of action points that he needs to plan for over the next 3 months, 1 year and 3 years, for him to get onto the road of achieving his vision. Here are some elements that must go into his short, medium and long term plans
Short term action points (next 3 months)
Institutionalize processes in Jaipur office and make operating manual, for use in new branches Create an annual customer satisfaction survey form, write and speak with all clients to participate in it and complete the inaugural edition within 3 months. Decide location of 2nd branch (preferably one that is close to Jaipur, to enable close monitoring). This need not be the second largest market in Rajasthan, as the focus is on getting a remote location branch operation right, before expanding to more distant locations Identify person within existing team to be groomed to become branch head in new branch Draw up a calendar of week-end "free financial planning camps" at all large housing colonies and diarize to connect with at least 3 housing societies every week to schedule camps. The aim will be to increase client base in Jaipur from 600 to 1000 families within 12 months.
As can be seen from this illustrative list of action points, there needs to be a judicious mix of short term measures that will yield short term results and immediate measures that are building blocks towards the larger goal.
Medium (next 1 year)
Open 2nd branch in proximate town, headed by key member transferred from Jaipur office Fix all shortcomings pointed out in 1st customer satisfaction survey, institutionalize processes in Jaipur and roll out similar processes in new branch as well Hire and train staff in new branch. Plan monthly campaigns in new town from 3rd month of operation onwards and personally supervise execution of first 3 campaigns Create MI pack for branch head's daily and monthly reporting to you Drive referral campaign in Jaipur from all clients and continue week end camps to generate leads Jaipur client base to increase to 1500 by year end and new branch to serve 200 families by end of 1st year Identify location of 3rd branch, identify branch head
The emphasis of goals here is to get the processes right in the 2nd branch to ensure that you know how to replicate this model across the next 10. At the same time, near term business targets for the main branch will continue to be in sharp focus and eyes will be set on the third branch as well.
Long term goals (3 years)
Kalpavriksh will have 5 branches in Rajasthan, all of which will be profitable Kalpavriksh will serve 3000 families across its 5 branches Customer satisfaction score (based on internally developed scoring model) should be at least 80%
Long term goals have to be completely aligned with the vision statement and must be stepping stones towards achieving them. When you take stock at the end of 3 years, and you find that you have achieved these milestones, you know you are well on your way to realizing your vision.
What often goes wrong
Making short, medium and long term plans that are completely aligned with your vision is a great way to get onto the journey. But, what often goes wrong is in the execution aspect. We all run our businesses, which come with their daily sets of challenges and pulls and pressures. How well we learn to focus our attention on what matters and not bother about what doesn't, is what makes one entrepreneur succeed while others don't. Its easy to get so bogged down in day to day fire fighting that you don't even realize that you are making no progress towards your goals. One way to tackle this is to break down your short term goals (3 month goals) into weekly action plans. Commit to a plan whereby every developmental task you have chalked out for the next 3 months is allocated to specific weeks. Ensure at the beginning of each week that you review tasks for the week ahead - broken down into "business-as-usual" and "developmental". Ensure that you begin the week by first tackling the developmental task, before the daily and weekly routine gets the better of you. Commit yourself to a weekly review at the end of each week where you look at what you have achieved, what you haven't, and set about making plans for the next week to ensure coverage of pending items first.
The other "distraction" if one can call it that, is various contests and quarterly targets and incentives offered by various product providers - be they AMCs or insurance companies. It is indeed tempting to look at the prospect of a fun trip to an exotic foreign locale if you work seriously towards delivering a certain sales volume to a particular product provider this month or quarter. You can do that, and then work towards the next trip in the next quarter and so on. Or, you can turn around and ask yourself how these contests are helping you realize your vision of serving 10,000 families across your state with a client satisfaction level of 90%. If the contest is not aligned with your vision, must you be devoting a lot of your energies towards it? Or is your time better spent doing more weekend "free financial planning camps" to generate more leads and take you closer to realizing your vision?
Content is created by Wealth Forum and must not be construed as an opinion by Reliance Mutual Fund.
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