It’s November, a time when the end of the year is suddenly much closer than you thought.
During the next two months people will be doing their best to tidy up all the loose ends, both business and personal, before the year ends.
Whether you do it yourself or have and executive team and thousands of employees, you can’t afford to focus only on wrapping up 2009; you need to plan for 2010.
The approach we use was drummed into my head since 1979 by Al Negrin, RampUp’s angel and chairman.
It’s called PBO (plans, budgets and objectives), but is very different from the …read more

I guess it’s pretty egotistical, but one of the links I’m giving you today is mine.
It’s is a quick read, but really useful; a guest post I did for Catch Your Limit Consulting, a strategic management and marketing firm, called Hate The Plan, Love The Planning. Let me know what you think.
The second one is an article you’ll probably be hearing a lot about. No matter what you think of the content, the question is whether John Mackey, CEO of Whole Foods, should have stepped into the political wasp nest of healthcare. After you read the article, be sure to …read more

When I wrote The Swamp And The Alligators: a (slightly irreverent) guide to career planning and the search process I had a chapter on career planning. Here is the first paragraph
“The world we live in is not conducive to planning in general, let alone long-term, i.e., strategic planning. There are very few good, visible role models who practice strategic planning. Elected officials don’t plan beyond the next election, while the government doesn’t seem to plan at all. Wall Street’s de facto definition of long-term is one quarter and companies are forced to accept and act on that definition or have …read more

“Don’t be fooled by the calendar. There are only as many days in the year as you make use of. One man gets only a week’s value out of a year while another man gets a full year’s value out of a week.“ –Charles Richards (And it’s your choice…)
“It’s not the plan that is important, it’s the planning”. –Graeme Edwards (Unlike crosswords, plans should always be done in pencil.)
“Life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans”. –John Lennon (Which is why you should use a pencil.)
“You see things and you say, ‘Why?’ But I dream things that never …read more

Yesterday we talked about the difference between SOP (seat of the pants) and PBO (plan, budget and objectives), so I assume that you’re the manager who wants to provide a plan that will win your people’s buy-in
What PBO offers

buy-in from every manager in the company,
a statement of objectives incorporating the commitments of them all, a budget which reflects the agreed spending level for every person with any kind of budget responsibility—and the further down you push budgetary responsibility the faster your people grow—and
the ability to execute the operating plan intelligently and without further direction.

Although I’ve used a full executive team …read more

This is the wrapping season, with everybody doing their best to tidy up all the loose ends, both business and personal, before the year ends. For bosses it’s more complicated. Whether you do it yourself or have thousands of employees, you need to master the fine art of wrapping up this year while readying for the next one.
You better have a plan
Size be damned you need to know

what you want to do, and
how you’re going to do it.

This brings you to the crux of the matter—how do you plan for a sustainable business?
Choose your approach

SOP (seat of the pants): Used …read more