by Kim Ogilvie, Events Coordinator
Most people don’t bother to write down their yearly goals let alone share their life’s aspirations with close friends or family.
How many times have you made a new year’s resolution where you started out highly motivated but over time that interest fizzles out or you become distracted or unfocused and then wonder why there is lack of progress?
Strategic planning for both your business and personal life is a roadmap of actions for the next year that forms the basis for prioritizing, decision-making, and choosing the principles by which we live by.
Ultimately, strategic planning helps us get really clear about what’s important and where to commit our time and effort.
In business, strategic planning is about mapping out a direction, allocating resources, aligning ambitions and goals, and reporting results.
Personal strategic planning is the same. Having a plan helps us to be intentional about reaching personal goals, whether these goals are related to career, family, health, finances, relationships, or spiritual connection.
Build a personal strategic plan by mapping out your vision and ambitions, core values, focus areas, objectives and goals, and measures of success onto a single page. Follow these steps to create a roadmap to achieve your most extraordinary you.
Start by creating a vision statement that represents what you wish to become. Ambition is your driving purpose, intention, and impact you want to make in your life – the thing that gets you out of bed in the morning.
Write down your five core values. Values are what we care about most, they resonate, and they cascade as principles that guide day-to-day decision-making.
Identify your focus areas by choosing the three most important priorities for the next year. These can be self, family, work, finances, recreation, health, relationships, experience, spiritual, etc.
For each focus area, identify objectives and SMART goals. An objective is a target or intention that is achieved by actionable goals. Goals should be Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Timebound.
Finally, think about the measures that best communicate what success looks like. Ultimately, at the end of the year we want to evaluate if our objectives achieved the results we were aiming for.
Strategic planning is a roadmap of our ambition, direction, priorities, and actions that take us where we want to go.
Use this placemat example to create a strategic plan that works best for you.
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