Small Business Owners are never short of things to do!
When building a repeatable business planning strategy, we first need to make sure this list of ToDos includes all the important “possibles” so our Plan covers all the vital issues.
We call these our GamePlan Candidates.
This stage of our repeatable business planning system shows how to search for a comprehensive GamePlan Candidate list.
Getting Started with GamePlan Candidates
To begin with, novices at business planning tend to limit their list of Candidates to things that occur to them, they read in books or friends and mentors suggest.
The limitation with this approach is that you will miss out on potentially important candidates simply because you haven’t thought of them! Consequently, your planning probably won’t get much better because you are not actively searching for presently unknown tasks that would dramatically improve your business.
So, we want to move to a more systematic, but still easy to do, stage of generating our GamePlan Candidate list.
Yellow Belt GamePlan Candidate Searches
Taking a leaf from the martial arts, our Yellow Belt techniques are your first step to improve your GamePlan Candidate search skills.
Diagnostics
When you go to a doctor, you describe what ails you (your symptoms) and the doctor diagnoses what is likely wrong.
You can do the same with your business!
Drill down though our self-diagnosis tools for problems you think you have to find possible solutions. These then get loaded to your list of GamePlan Candidates. Start your self diagnosis here.
Prefab GamePlans
A lot of the issues you face have to do with the same sort of issues previous Owners have faced (e.g.);
- how to grow from a one person business
- how to turnaround a business with financial problems
- how to reduce the demands my business makes on me so i can have a better family life, and so on
To make your planning simpler, we have assembled GamePlan Candidate lists for common issues like this into what we call Prefab GamePlans.
You just have to pick a prefab and you get suggested issues for your next GamePlan.
Naturally, these are general in nature and intended just to help you get started. Always get professional advice on specific issues.
More Powerful Blue Belt GamePlan Candidate Searches
As you get more familiar with the GamePlan Candidate process, you can move on to more powerful search methodologies.
These include more advanced brainstorming methods like our “Million Ideas“.
They also include “drill down” techniques like the well known “5 Whys” widely used in larger businesses when you have a problem but don’t know what is causing it. Use it for GamePlan Candidates when something is not working that you want to fix but you don’t know why it is not working.
If you want to focus the next GamePlan on some element of your overall strategy, our StrategyTrees divide your strategy into;
- Critical Success factors (CSF): that must work for your business to succeed
- Necessary Conditions (NC): the things that must work for your CSF to work and
- Key Success Factors (KSF): that are the strategy elements that make the NC work.
From there, you can spot the weak elements and list them as GamePlan Candidates.
Your business’s accounts also contain a wealth of information on profitability and trends. These indicate when things are going OK and when remedial action is required. Our approach to these is quite straightforward and you don’t need advanced accounting skills.
If you have some idea of the issues you face, you can use AI to expand your understanding of what is involved in the issue so you can add it to the list.
FAQ
Do I need a business degree to find Candidates for my Business plan?
With our GamePlan System, any Business Owner can get started. Just like the martial arts we start you on White Belt and move you up through Yellow and Blue Belts as your experience grows.
How long does it take to assemble GamePlan Candidates?
We take time out of the process. You have a Candidate list that you can add to, and take from, overtime. There is no wasted effort.
How do I filter out impractical Candidates?
That’s quite straightforward with the GamePlan System. As a beginner, we show you how to use your “gut” to make decisions. As you get more experience, you can use more advanced techniques.
How many Candidates do I need for a Plan?
There is no fixed number. As soon as you have one, your next Quarterly GamePlan can progress. If you have a lot of Candidates, we show you how to prioritise them to the top 1 or 2.
Can I build the Candidate list by myself?
Definitely! No one knows your business better than you. With our GamePlan System, at any time you can share what you have with others and brainstorm for more Candidates that you haven’t already thought of.
Do I have to use expensive software?
We start with simple spreadsheets which every business already has access to. At some point, you may want more powerful software but that is strictly optional.
Wrap-up
Having a comprehensive list of GamePlan Candidates is a necessity when developing a sound repeatable business planning cycle for your GamePlan System.
The following step demonstrates how to pick the most important Candidates for inclusion on the next Quarterly GamePlan round.
This article was provided by Scott Williams AO FAIDC. It describes the way best practice in many management areas has been brought together in the 12Faces GamePlan System. The Goal is to provide an easy to use and repeatable “flywheel” to improve small business owners’ outcomes. Scott is the Founder of NFP small business support services 12Faces and MentorSME and has a Philanthropic Foundation supporting students in education. Scott’s business Petals Network was National Small Business of the Year and 4 times in the Top 100 Fastest Growing Australian Businesses LinkedIn