Small business owners and entrepreneurs rarely, if ever, get a “time-out” for thinking about the big picture of their life and business. The go-go-go habit is quite addictive, involving all sorts of factors like adrenaline, drive, ambition, fear, passion… the list goes on. These are all GOOD things except sometimes we can start to feel like we’re running ragged, not quite sure if what we’re putting our efforts into is going to come together in the end. I experience this all the time as an entrepreneur and independent consultant and I’ve found in six years of business that it helps a lot to set aside one day every six months or so to think deeply about my direction.
Visual Business Planning is a structured framework for the entrepreneur’s “time-out”. It supports an entrepreneur in thinking deeply about his or her business plan, marketing, life/work balance – whatever issues are uppermost, creating a need to step back and reflect. Here’s how it works:
- An entrepreneur (or a two-person team) contacts me with an interest in doing a session. I ask a few questions to find out what is going on, both in the business and life, and provide information (like what’s in this blog post) about what to expect. We decide if the entrepreneur is able to set aside a full day for the session, or just a half day. So far I’ve found a half-day session is enough to give a client plenty to think about without overloading.
- Before the Visual Business Planning session I send a list of questions to the client. These are customized to reflect the client’s situation and can focus on business direction, marketing, team-building, work/life balance… these are the most common areas. If the session is going to deal with strategic planning or work/life balance issues, I also send a list of Values Words and invite the client to reflect on what things are most important to him/her. The client’s response helps me structure a customized agenda for the session.
- During the session, we use big paper (4′ x 8′) on my studio wall to literally draw out the problems facing the client. For a marketing-focused session like this one, the charts showed things like the client’s primary target markets, what he offered those customers, etc. For sessions that focus on business and life planning like this one, we may do a strengths-weaknesses analysis and some long-range visioning.
- The real crux of the session is not the pictures: it’s the dialogue and reflection that takes place. My job as a facilitator is to help my clients make their own discoveries by asking perceptive questions. Having an objective, caring person ask you to explain your own decisions and ambitions helps you to clarify them in a way almost impossible to achieve on your own.
- At the end of the session I reserve time to help the client make an achievable action list of things they will do to follow up on the session in the next month. These actions will push the client slightly outside their comfort zone, but not so much that the resistance will lead to inertia. It’s up to the client to follow through with these things but I don’t want anyone to set themselves up for failure.
- After the session, if the client wishes, I’ll add color and graphics to the existing charts, and perhaps fine-tune some of the messages. I do this almost immediately after the client leaves so conversations are fresh in my mind. Then I digitally photograph the charts and send a JPG to the client. I also find a time to return the full-sized charts to the client.
That’s it! It’s a mini-retreat for an entrepreneur, supported by an objective, caring third party who just happens to be creating a visual record of the retreat as it occurs. Because it’s supported with an agenda and you have a concrete action plan in place for afterwards, it’s much more effective than just taking a morning to sit in a coffee shop with your journal. Oh yes – I also provide yummy coffee and baked treats for a mid-session snack.
Game to try it? Here’s a little gimmick to make you jump on the bandwagon before the year is out: everybody who does a Visual Business Planning session with me between now and January 31, 2010 will be entered in a draw for a Nikon Coolpix digital camera. Just in time for snapshots of the 2010 Olympics – or whatever you’re doing to avoid the Olympics!
Tags: visual planning
