Small business development requires a commitment to start working ‘on’ your business rather than just working ‘in’ your business. The Plan-Do-Review-Improve model is a simple way of helping you with the business development process.
Step 1: Plan
Decide on what area of the business you want to work on. Identify what your goal for that area of the business is. The goal should be ‘smart’ – specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and time-bound. Develop a plan of action that will get the business to that goal from where it is.
Choose a way of measuring your success – an indicator. How will you know that you have been successful? eg increased sales, less complaints etc.
Step 2: Do
Don’t postpone – ‘Do’ your plan as soon as possible. Action beats all!
Step 3: Review
Look at the indicator that you chose to measure your development by. Has it improved? If it has improved – congratulations you have started developing your business!
If it hasn’t improved – it is essential that you identify why it hasn’t improved. Keep asking the question ‘why?’ until you are satisfied you understand the reason the plan didn’t work. For example, you may have made an incorrect assumption that you believed was a fact.
At this point you will probably want to give up but now you have the most to gain!
Step 4: Improve
Having understood either why your plan worked or why it didn’t work you are in a position to improve the process. Is there a better way to approach the goal?
Step 5: Plan … but now with more ammunition!
Ok, so I said ‘4 Steps’ – but that’s the point! If you want to develop your small business you are going to want to make this part of your small business life.
It is the small things that we do often rather than the big things that we do occasionally that influence us most so try to make the Plan-Do-Review-Improve method a business habit and set your business free!
© Business Set Free Ltd 2013
This is just one of many articles that you can find at BusinessSetFree.com or click to subscribe to our free e-newsletter.
