Do you know that you need a plan for your business but aren’t sure how to get started? I’m going to share how to create a 12 week plan for your business so that you can start planning for your business like a professional.

 

 

Hopefully, you already know the importance of planning in life, but especially in business.

As Benjamin Franklin famously said,

“If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail”

 

A good plan enables you to understand what you are trying to achieve and ensure that you are focusing your resources into the right areas. Now it is common for businesses to have annual plans. These can often be in line with the financial year. However, an alternative way of planning is to create a 12 week plan.

 

I first came across the idea of having a 12 week plan when The 12 Week Year by Brian P. Moran and Michal Lennington, back in 2016. (I reviewed the book and you can check out my review by clicking here)

 

The idea behind setting plans over 12 weeks instead of a year is that 12 weeks “provides a fine horizon that is long enough to get things done, yet short enough to create a sense of urgency and a bias for action”.

 

This makes sense and as soon as I read the book I could see how it was already being used. I noticed how big businesses report on their performance per quarter and I spotted how lots of coaching programmes would last for 90 days.

 

I decided to give the 12 week planning process a go. First, I tried it with my accountability partner and the results were amazing that I worked all of my services around it. For example, if you sign up for a strategy day we create a 90-day action plan in that session.

 

 

STEP 1: DEFINE YOUR GOALS FOR THE 12 WEEK PERIOD

 

As with any planning process the first thing you need to do is define your goals. In order to achieve anything you have to be super clear about what you want.

 

I would suggest you have a maximum of 3 goals and ideally these should be SMART goals. If you haven’t come across SMART before the acronym is used differently by different people, but my understanding is

 

S is for SPECIFIC

M is for MEASURABLE

A is for ACTIONABLE

R is for REALISTIC

T is for TIMED

 

Ultimately you want the goals to be clear enough that another person can judge if you have achieved it.

 

STEP 2: WORK OUT WHAT ACTIONS YOU WILL NEED TO TAKE OVER THE 12 WEEKS TO ACHIEVE YOUR GOALS

 

Once you know what you want to achieve you will need to start working out how you are going to achieve it. Now don’t fret if you don’t know exactly how you are going to achieve it right now but you at least should know some actions you get you started.

 

Actions can be broken down into two categories: independent and sequential. For example, independent actions are these that you can do on week 1 or week 12. The timing of taking the action doesn’t matter. However, sequential actions are actions that are reliant on something else. For example, if your goal is to launch a podcast then you would have actions such as record an episode, edit an episode and upload episode to host. These have to be done in that order. You can’t upload an episode that hasn’t been recorded or edited.

 

For sequential actions, you will need to write these out in the right order ready for the next stage.

 

STEP 3: CREATE AN 12 WEEK ACTION TIMELINE

 

Once you clear on the actions you have to take (or as many you are aware of) it is time to start creating a timeline. For each week you want to start adding in your actions. This is where knowing your sequential actions is key. You will need to work out what actions you need to take first and put these into Week 1 and then keep on going. As mentioned in Step 2, you might not know all of the things you have to do. Fill in as much as you can and leave space. This means as the week progress you can add actions as you become aware of them.

 

 

STEP 4: ADD IN MILESTONES

 

The next step is to add in milestones. A major reason for people not achieving their goals is because their big goal feels very far away and they don’t set points in between for them to review their progress. Milestones are designed to stop this from happening. For each goal you want to identify a few milestones. They should represent you reaching a certain stage towards your goal and have a date. For example, with the launching the podcast goal you could have to recorded 3 episodes by week 6 and then to have the 3 episodes uploaded into your host system by week 8. Like with setting goals it should be easy for you to know if you have achieved a milestone or not.

 

STEP 5: REVIEW AND REVISE ON A WEEKLY BASIS

 

The key to this plan working is to not set it and forget it, but to use it. As you take some actions you may realise other actions you need to take so your weekly action lists should be updated. Also once a week you should review how the last week has gone and then for the week ahead you should review your upcoming actions and then plot into your calendar when you are going to actually do those actions.

 

 

YOU ARE READY TO GO! If you follow those 5 steps you will be able to create a 12 week plan for your business.

 

However, if you want to go further you should add in this extra element – ACCOUNTABILITY!

 

Accountability is where you share your goals and plan with someone else and you have them check in with you. As I mentioned in the beginning, I first tried this planning method with an accountability partner and it worked great. Knowing that someone else is going to be checking up on should help you to keep to your word and follow the plan.

 

READY TO CREATE YOUR OWN 12 WEEK PLAN?

 

You have everything you need to know to start creating your 12 week plan for your business. If you would like to work with someone to create and ensure you implement your plan then you can check out how to work with me by clicking here. I follow this format across all of the services I provide.