Branson
Centre Foundations of Entrepreneurship - Session 3
To view Session 1, click here
There's nothing graceful about learning to juggle. You may feel like a total klutz, madly waving your arms in every direction while every ball crashes down at once. Here's a little secret... Unless you are one of the few exceptionally coordinated - you DO look as bad as you feel.
Here's another secret. Possibly one that every entrepreneur will want to shout from the nearest rooftop. It's ok to admit that you have no idea how to juggle.
If you want to learn how to stay open for business though, you need to keep many different balls in the air at once and be focused enough to know which one to catch when.
Let's move on from the cleverly crafted metaphor I am silently patting myself on the back for and on to my thoughts of Branson Centre Foundations of Entrepreneurship Session 3.
Session 3 was entitled "Strategise it, Plan it and then Just DO IT!"
We started off by identifying the principles and values we ascribe to. As an entrepreneur, your personal values carry through strongly into your business. They influence how the business operates.
In his book "Lose the business plan", Allon Raiz (founder of Raiscorp) says
"Have you ever steered a small boat? The key to going forward is to make sure that the rudder, the mechanism that controls the boat is aligned with the bow, or front, of the boat. If the rudder is not pointed in the same direction, the boat will go around in circles. It is the same with a business. The rudder is the values of the business owner; the boat is the values of the business."
(Raiz, 2010:53)
After identifying what was important to us as individuals and writing a personal vision statements, we were better equipped to write vision and mission statements for our businesses. Not the kind that get framed, hung on a wall and then forgotten. The kind that you can refer back to and know, unequivocally, what is important to the business, why and how it does what it does and for whom.
We also took a look at the standard strategy acronyms that everybody has heard of but few actually use as often (or effectively) as they should. You guessed it SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats) and SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable Realistic and Time-bound) goal setting.
Having clearly identified our target markets in a previous session, as well as checking out what our competition was up to, made doing the SWOT analysis easier.
We were asked to set 3 goals for our business over the next 3 years. I honestly had to think very hard on this one. It's easy to be flippant or thumb suck a goal, but it had to be both achievable and realistic. In the early days as a business owner, when you're living from day to day, trying to pay bills - you (and by that I mean I) hope things will work out - but you're so caught up in the now that proper planning seems like too time intensive an exercise.
Long term planning is essential. If you don't have a destination in mind for your business, then you will land up in a place you don't want to be in - by default. Or you may go around in circles indefinitely.
Once you know where you want your business to go, and your long term goals are set - you can work on the "How do we get from here to there?" question. This is where monthly, weekly and daily planning comes in.
It's also where the next essential component fits. Putting the right systems in place.
I love the way its stated in the Branson Centre Foundations manual:
"S.Y.S.T.E.M - Save. Yourself. Time. Energy and Money."
We were encouraged to take a critical look at how our businesses operate as well as the systems we currently had in place. Part of our (growing pile of) homework was identifying the systems that needed to be implemented in our companies.
If you want to become a successful juggler... I mean entrepreneur - then you need to start by strategising, planning and doing.
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