It has been a little while since I blogged and part of this has been because it is the silly season and I have been very busy. Part is because I have struggled for a theme to write about – so I have decided to go back to an old friend.

As regular readers of the blog know I am passionate about business planning. I am constantly amazed how little business planning seems to go on, but how the energy released once a business embraces proper, strategic planning can lead to really powerful results.

I am currently running a 2 day business planning workshop for the Soil Association. Some of the group have done planning before – others haven’t. However, by the end of the workshop everyone is engaged and contributing to the exercises. The reason for this is that they are all passionate about their organisation and want to achieve the best they can. They have different areas of expertise which are all critical to the associations’ success, and are able to bring this to the planning process.

At the end of the two days each of the three groups have made good inroads into producing a business plan for a real project. More importantly they have a clear idea of the extra information they need to get hold of if they are going to complete meaningful plans to be presented to a third party – be it a director or an outside agency. There is also a great energy which will see the business plans moved forward.

You can achieve the same in your business by taking time out of your day-to-day work to really review your business and where it is going. If you involve other employees/managers in your review and planning exercise, you may well find that ideas and energy flow in a way that you have not seen before.

However, if your business is not worth this time out, I would suggest you review why you are in the business you are in.

As always I would extol you to work smarter and not harder – and part of this is having a robust plan.