Running a Small Business

Lesson 3: Organization and Planning

Making adjustments

If everything goes as planned, you'll reach your goals and live happily ever after. If there are problems, something's happened which you didn't plan for and you'd better change your plan to take account of the new factor. If you planned and scheduled properly, breaking down the work into tiny steps, scheduling each one and setting down the results of each one, then you are in good shape for making adjustments. If you also tracked the corresponding values closely, then you knew about the problem very early on so it's not serious yet. Early notification and good planning mean that you have a good chance to make the adjustments which will still let you reach your goal.

Making adjustments to take into account unforeseen factors basically means taking the present situation as a starting point and re-planning everything. It may be enough to just review the plan and make minor adjustments or you may have to scrap the plan and make a completely new one. You can only find this out by going through the planning process again and seeing whether your goals are still attainable.

In our example of increasing profit by 20%, you may find that you don't get the twenty new names per week from referrals - looking back at the planning process, you find that there was an alternative - getting new names from your files. Look up new names to make up the balance and you're back on track with the original plan and a minor adjustment.

In the same example, you may find that the twenty names per week do not give you the number of new orders you projected. Looking back at the planning process and the results so far you decide more new names will fix the problem. Take more names out of your files or make more calls for referrals. Both solutions will result in more names and you can still stick to the plan with some adjustments in scheduling.

Finally, you may find that the orders you get don't result in the projected profit. The new orders are more difficult to process and the profit margin is lower. This can't be fixed as easily and you might have to re-do your whole plan, re-evaluate your targets or settle for not meeting them. However, you take note of this new information and, when planning profit projections from new orders for next year, you will take this new factor into account.

The systematic approach to achieving your goals has many advantages and does increase the chances that you will actually reach them. If not, at the very least you'll know exactly why and how not to repeat your mistake.

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