It is true that the future can't be predicted and that is enough reason to have a plan as an entrepreneur. Your business might be very successful but because of the constant change in business and technology, it is good to have a number of set variables that will determine how your business will react to these changes without any loss or downfall..
Creating strategic plans of a desired number of years, say 5, 10 or 15 years and micro monthly plans will enable you to not only track the performance of your business but it will help you prepare and constantly keep abreast to industrial changes so as not to be caught unawares.. Whether it is a 5 or 10 or 15 years plan, the basics are the same.
First, check the status of your business.. It's strengths and weaknesses.. It's opportunities and threats. Check your achievements and competitions. The easiest is to go back to your mission and vision statements and consider if you have achieved them so far, this help you discover where you are lagging and knowing where you are lagging will enable you make changes then plan for the future.
Then envision where you want your business to be in the desired year, let's say next 5 years. Consider how many more branches you want to have, if you want to expand to the global market. If you want to add more products or services to your current products or services, just where do you see your business in the next 5 years.
Envision where you want to be in the next five years in your personal life.. Do you still want to be in charge,or do you want more hours to yourself and just delegate roles, this will enable you know exactly how to select your workforce. Do you want to run a second business,
This is the part where you create micro plans on how you want to achieve your goals. For example if you want to expand to the international market, you start making plans to increase sales, workforce etc.. These micro plans will consist on how you want to achieve your business goals and when you need to take the set steps towards achieving the yearly strategic plan.
Now determine what success means to you. How do you want to determine if you are making progress. What indicators will you use to measure your success, is it the number of sales or the number of new locations added towards your 5 year global expansion goals. Setting indicators to measure your success will enable you know if you are really making progress towards your goals..
Now that you have set these plans in motion, keep reviewing them every 6 or 12 months to know if you need to make corrections. Keep an eye on the current industrial and economic changes/trends and adjust your plans to suit the current market demands. With these in place, you'll be able to determine where you want to be and work accordingly.
Thanks for reading..
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Nice work Chidinma @nmalove. Superb, especially applying SWOT analysis. Cheers!!