One of the prime goals of entrepreneurs is to gain freedom – financial freedom and more choices.

The vehicle of choice to entrepreneurs to gain independence is through their business.  Yet too often, a business will enslave it owners to its care.  Game plans seem to be scuttled by all the unforeseen events that business life throws at us.  We do the best we can, reacting to the circumstances that come our way.  But it can feel like an uphill battle.

One method of dealing with this is to put a little distance between you and the “scuttling” circumstances.  Sounds interesting in theory, but how do you do this in real life?

Take the “Project Perspective”

What if the various elements of supporting a business to grow could be broken down into projects?  This is a common approach working with clients and customers, but used far less often for internal initiatives.  When a company is small, taking the “project perspective” adds a level of clarity and measurability that might otherwise be missing.

90% of effective completion starts in the formulation.  By taking the time to formulate your project plan, you improve the odds of its effective completion.

What follows is a summary of the sections of a project plan.  The project plan provides the necessary steps in formulating and implementing an effective project.  This planning template can be used with smaller projects or with bigger projects. 

For example, you might use this template to break down a huge project (doubling your gross sales and net income within a 2 year period) into “bite-size” pieces, clarifying the activities that you need to do today, to achieve that large goal on time.

Step 1:  Purpose

Write down a simple statement of the overall purpose of the project. The one or two sentences that address your purpose need to be from a big enough viewpoint to define what you are going to achieve, completely.

For our example, for the owner of a business with $2 million in gross sales with a 7% net income - before tax - the purpose might be stated as follows:

Purpose:  The purpose of this project is to double gross sales and at least double the net income - before tax - of my company within the next 24 months.

With a clear project purpose, you are off to a good start.

Step 2:  Intended Results

The purpose states the overall general direction, and the intended results section of a project plan gives the specifics.  What are the specific intended results or outcomes that you want to achieve as part of completing this project?

Possible intended results for this example might look like this.

Intended Results

1. Gross sales levels at $4 million per annum
2. Net income rises to at least $280,000 (before tax)
3. No sacrifice to my standard of living (including hours worked or stress levels) in the process
4. Client delivery maintained or improved in the process – no loss of customer satisfaction in any way
5. A sufficient foundation built to act as the springboard to the next levels of growth beyond this two year period
6. Relationships within the company nourished and thriving within a powerful corporate culture of a well-built organization.

Whatever the specific conditions of satisfaction that are needed to judge the project a success are listed within the Intended Results segment of the project plan.

Part 2…