Midnight Oil Season
Back in my days in the corporate world, my family knew that from the end of September until the
end of October I will barely be home. The reason being that by November 1 the next year’s budget needed to be submitted to the board for approval. The process required repeated iterations to find a fine balance between an ambitious-enough growth and reality. The result was usually 8%-10% annual growth, a rate that would be acceptable as a target, achievable, and allow me to slightly exceed it to show how good I was…
The companies I worked for had long-term (10-15 years) strategic plans, but did not have actionable ones, therefore so long as the budget followed the “this is what we’ve always been doing” principle, just a little bit more of the same was good enough.
When is started working as a SME mentor I realised that what worked in the corporate world wasn’t enough there – for a small-medium business, 8%-10% annual growth rate is not going to make much of a difference. When SME’s want to grow, they need a 30% growth rate or more, and to achieve this they need to identify true boosters that will catapult them to the next level.
The conclusion was that to create a ground-breaking budget a business first needs an agile strategic plan that will outlay reality-changing steps it needs to take, create a plan to implement them, and then show the results in the budget.
Enter Stratagilty® - a tried and tested process that has already helped scores of SME’s break their barriers and achieve exponential growth. Only yesterday I sat with such a company’s management team when one of them mentioned that he in the next few days they will get a deposit for a £110,000 project. The comment passed without anyone raising a brow but a few moments later everyone suddenly realised that 4 years ago this was half their annual revenue. Now it’s nice to hear but nothing too exciting – it is less than their monthly sales.
So if you want your budget to be truly transformational, Stratagilty® comes first. Since the Midnight Oil Season is around the corner, now is the time for it.
Do you have a budget? Is it a tool for growth?
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