Chapter 31

Keeping records deals with what you're doing - the next step is dealing with what you're going to what you will have to do. Planning starts with goals and works backwards from there. You reduce the goals to tiny steps that need to be taken, schedule the steps and track progress. You'll be surprised how liberating it is when you no longer have a huge and distant goal that has to be achieved in front of you but rather a tiny step that has to be and can easily be taken today.

The final step in organizing and planning your business is to plan for failure and unexpected events. Such things will happen. If you've planned for them, they become hiccups on the road to success. If you don't plan for them, they are major, paralyzing disasters which can lead to the failure of your business and the forced abandoning of the goals you've worked towards. And there's a link back to ensuring quality. That process can be applied to any activity - we explored how to apply it to production in the previous lesson but it can also be applied to running a business. "Define" your goals, "Decide" how to achieve them, "Carry Out" the activities and "Check" your result. That's planning which results in organization. That's what you have to achieve for your small businesses.

She had noted down some questions she had wanted to ask, but someone out there seemed to have the same concerns as her and was already asking the question. He welcomed questions from the audience and was answering them with examples and with a detailed explanation. The more he explained the more questions were thrown at him, and it looked like he was actually enjoying answering them. She decided that she had to find some time to talk to him, she was not sure if it was possible.