A professional football coach has a thorough and detailed game plan each week. Heck, I know Pee Wee football coaches who watch hours of video and have comprehensive game plans for their team’s nine-year old opponents every Saturday. A professional pilot would never operate a plane without a flight plan. Professional tennis player Roger Federer, a 20-time Grand Slam Tennis champion, had this to say about the importance of a plan, “I have to be very thoughtful in my planning, really decide beforehand, what are my goals, what are my priorities? I think that’s what’s going to determine how successful I will be.”
Professionals have plans. Amateurs don’t. They wing it and hope for the best. Are you a professional manager, or are Pee Wee football coaches better prepared than you are? If your strategic direction is not recorded in a document, then you don’t have a plan. And if you don’t have a plan, research shows that sooner or later, you’ll get beat. The number one cause of business failure is bad, or non-existent strategy. Think. Plan. Act. Repeat. Take this one-minute quiz to see how your plan rates: https://www.strategyskills.com/plan-assessment/