A newly-released Asia Pacific survey by CPA Australia says that while small business is driving recovery and growth in South East Asia, Australia will be left behind. The report compares 1000 small business operators with employees of less than 20 in Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore and Australia, and suggests that our local entrepreneurs are left behind when it comes to basic management practices. Don't be part of these statistics.

Successful businesses whether small or large demonstrate mastery over areas such as cash flow , management of people and management of personal time. No matter what your personal business goals are, to achieve them you need to develop an action plan. However, many people fail to do this and sabotage themselves before they start.

The great physicist Albert Einstein said "Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results"

Developing an action plan will transform your thoughts and your way of doing things. Begin by reviewing what you have done well over the last 12 months and where you can improve. If you need inspiration, look at your historical sales trends, profit margins, debtor days or any other relevant information. If you don't have this information you should put some measures in place immediately. Typical measures such as the number of sales calls in a day, the amount of product sold per employee, daily purchasing costs, daily delivery costs or whatever is relevant to your action plan is needed. Use this data to establish realistic, sustainable improvement goals for your action plan.

Sounds simple? A lot of action plans do not deliver their potential. Many people create goals for themselves, only to never see them materialise. One of the main reasons that their goals do not become their reality is that they do not move out of their "comfort zones". That is, they focus on the areas where they are most familiar, in addition they do not develop a strategic approach to completing the required actions and lose motivation. By following a few simple steps you will give yourself the best possible chance to succeed. Remember:

                                  Developing your Action Plan

1. Review what you are really trying to achieve (try to be as specific as possible.)

2. Brainstorm the influencing items and rank their importance objectively*

3. Identify the critical items and develop ideas to improve and implement them.

4. Measure the results.

5. If successful move onto the next issue or modify your improvement idea.  

 Typically when you begin to develop your action plan you will have lots of ideas. How do you determine which to action first? A simple but powerful technique called Pareto* can be used ,some people know it as the 80/20 rule.

 As an example let's say your objective is to increase your current sales without increasing your existing sales force. Begin by listing all your customers and the revenue for the last 12 months. Then summarise the amount of revenue by customer. You will find that approximately 80 % of the revenue is contributed by 20% of the customers. It would make sense then to ensure the sales force increases their attention on the critical 20 % of customers to build more sales. I am not suggesting that you forget about the rest of your current or potential customers, just to increase the focus on the customers that give you the revenue.

 This technique can be used in all areas of your business, you might apply this approach on product type rather than customers. The principal is the same. Although this is a simple application of Pareto it can help save a lot of time and enable you to quickly concentrate on the areas that will have the most influence on your goals .

 It is helpful to support your action plan utilising a continuous improvement approach. A simple planned approach is all that is required and one such tool that can be used is called the PDCA cycle.

The PDCA  approach is only one of many. However, it is a simple one that is easy to follow, and is a good tool to support your action plan.

Finally, know the future you want and have a strategy or system to make it happen. Of course, life doesn't always turn out the way we hoped. Things happen. But winners are very precise about the future they want, and they imagine it and work for it, every single day. You should too ! Don't be scared to change the action plan if the needs of the business change. Just remember that  business improvement just like in life is the quest for never ending perfection.

For more information contact Brett Griffith at Fulcrum Business Support on 3821 7727 or 0439 010 737 or This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it .