A Mid-Year Planning Check-in
So it’s almost the end of June – which means we’re nearing the middle of the year. You’ve got six months left, and I have one question for you: How has your plan for this year been working out?
Now, I say that with love, because for so many of us, we get to this part of the year and there’s a little bit of panic. There’s overwhelm. There’s confusion. There’s wondering if we’ve done something wrong because we’re not quite where we planned to be.
If you’re someone who has already surpassed your plan, that’s absolutely fantastic! But if not, I want to offer you a different perspective.
Go back and take a look at the plan that you created in January or February, and go ahead and change it.
Rewrite your numbers and recreate what you think will happen between now and the end of the year. Forgive yourself for any numbers you didn’t hit, any launches you didn’t do, or any actions that you didn’t take.
What we have to recognize is that a plan is a projection. Plans are not meant to be perfect. Writing down a plan doesn’t mean things are going to unfold that way.
When I worked at L’Oréal Paris, there was an entire financial and planning department that changed the company’s plan every single week based on the numbers.
I find that, as small-business owners, we don’t seem to follow the philosophy that a plan is a projection.
Instead, we beat ourselves up for not being prophets. We made a plan in January, and as soon as February or March hit and something stopped aligning with the plan, we stopped following the plan.
When we stopped following the plan, we started coasting – creating things that we thought might work. We got a little off-kilter, and before we knew it, June rolled around, and we found ourselves totally off track.
But we can change where we are now, simply by reframing what a plan is: a projection that needs to be changed every time our actuals come in.
The most important piece of the planning process is not to ask yourself, did I hit the plan? It’s to ask yourself, how am I changing the plan? How am I moving and shaking and being resilient and pivoting so that I can keep moving forward as I change the plan?
Now, if you want to learn more about planning and my other five principles of planning – and if you want to actually do your 90-day plan with me – I want to invite you to join us at the Breakthrough Planner Day that we’re holding this Saturday, June 25.
Purchasing our 90-day planner, the Breakthrough Planner, will give you an automatic invitation to our Breakthrough Planner Day on Saturday.
So my invitation to you this week is to dig up your plan, go back to the month when it began, and forgive yourself if the numbers aren’t there. Start over, recreate that plan, and remember that a plan is only a projection – and projections need to be changed and updated.
