Pay Attention to What is Important

In the new year make sure you pay attention to what is important but not urgent. This is the time to make resolutions – that process involving review of the past year and resolving to do something different in the new year. It is a given that urgent but not important matters often replace important but not urgent matters in the time allocation of business owners. This diverts the owners from accomplishing important long-term tasks such as obtaining maximum value for their business interests. To pay attention to what is important you must prioritize paying attention to what is important by scheduling time for that and exercising the discipline to honor the schedule.

During the scheduled time you are paying attention to what is important initially you must deal with the question of what is important? To make sure you continue to pay attention I have four more questions for you to answer in your scheduled time to pay attention to what is important.

The initial and principal question: What is important? This question is answered by creating a written strategy. A strategy is a set of choices derived from personal values that define what is important to you. A value is a normative principle that informs and shapes thoughts, desires, feelings, choices, and behavior. A value is not a preference, but an enduring and essential attribute of character. To bring clarity and order to your personal value system, you should reflect on the circumstances and experiences that have informed and shaped the your hopes, fears, and perspectives. Values define a strategy by helping to answering the question, what is desired? The product of this reflection should be memorialized in writing. In the writing, you must clarify and prioritize personal values which will suggest and frame desires. The writing should be reviewed and amended from time to time to reflect changing circumstances and perspectives. From this writing, you are prepared to articulate your values to other owners and create from that dialogue a business strategy. For a very high percentage of the owners I have known who think about strategies and have been successful, they have adopted Prior Diligence as a strategy template for accomplishing the result of realizing the highest possible value from ownership of a business interest. The components of prior diligence are: separation of the owner from management, the presence of co-owners, the implementation of a buy-sell agreement among the owners, a sale to an unrelated outside buyer, and management of the business with dynamic planning. All of these components are described with more detail in the archives of the Owning A Business substack at rickriebesell.substack.com.

The second question is: what is the essential goal to accomplish in the upcoming year based on your personal and business strategy? The correct long-term strategic planning question is what things do we need to accomplish to get what we want? The long-term goals cannot be achieved in a short period of time. You need to establish intermediate goals that can reasonably accomplished in a year or less. If your long-term goal is to sell your business for the maximum value and your are still an owner-manager, your goal for the year might be to find management replacements for your management activity.

The third question is: what actions must be taken to accomplish the goal? Whether a desired goal can be met is determined by a plan which deals with the resources available to meet the goal. Strategy answers the important desire question. Planning describes the action to be taken to accomplish the goal. If you plan first without knowing what is important, you are simply looking at the resources available and asking, what can we do with these resources? This ignores all issues of whether certain actions are appropriate or even worth consideration. This unfocused effort will not result in excellent business performance.

The fourth question is: how will you measure the progress toward the goal? What are the mileposts that should be reached each month to achieve your goal? To properly monitor the progress toward a goal, there should be points of progression or mileposts that indicate whether appropriate progress is being made. For the goal of finding employees to take over management duties that you as an owner now have, you may set milestones of writing a job description, advertising the position, conducting interviews, hiring, and training management employees to take over your current management activity.

The fifth question: if I miss a milepost, how do I efficiently revise the plan and communicate the changes? When the results are unexpected, the actions taken to meet the goal need to be revised. Delays can occur. We all know from experience that you can’t always get what you want. If the strategy is coherent, the goal will be understood, and the effort may produce the best result possible. But the ways of the world will cause things to change, and that will not only force changes in planning but perhaps changes in values and then strategy. The decision-making process is circular, and the communication of monitoring results, changing strategy, and revising plans must be continuous and communicated in a timely manner at all levels of the business. Dynamic Planning, as described and explained in the Owning A Business substack at rickriebesell.substack.com, describes a planning format to communicate effectively to all involved parties the goal and the actions to be taken to meet the goal as well as the results of those actions.

In the upcoming year, to avoid prioritizing urgent but not important matters, answer these questions. What is important? What is the essential goal to accomplish in the upcoming year? What actions must be taken to accomplish the goal? How will I measure the progress toward the goal? How do I efficiently revise and communicate the changes? At the end of the year you will look back on the accomplishment of important tasks.