Why I start talking about next year in the summer

Summer is when I start talking to my clients about their plan for next year.

That might sound early. The reason I do it is something I've watched happen for years. Most businesses leave the plan until Q4, and by then it's a rush. It turns into a box to tick so there's something written down for next year, instead of a proper chance to stop and think about where the business is actually going.

Starting now takes the time pressure off. You get to sit with it, change your mind, test an assumption, come back to it a week later with a clearer head. When you're tight on time you go with the first version you land on, and the first version is rarely the best one.

When a lot of SME owners think about planning, I see one of two things. Either a 40-page strategy document that takes weeks to build and then sits in a drawer, or straight into a spreadsheet with all the focus on the numbers. Putting a number on a page doesn't mean you have a plan.

If you're serious about growing, a real plan gets you there quicker and gets you there better. Without one, the risk is mediocre results, team members pulling in different directions, and every decision still landing back on your desk.

What I recommend is something I call Strategy on a Page. One page that sets out the priorities and focus areas for the next one to three years, with a clear owner against each action. One simple roadmap the whole team can work from and come back to when things come up during the year.

The owners I work with tell me the clarity is the part they value most. It gets everything out of their head and onto a page, with a clear direction. More than a few have said they wish they'd done it years ago.

It helps to have an outside pair of eyes for this, someone to ask the questions nobody inside the business is asking and to bring in what well-run companies are doing. If you'd rather make a start on your own over the summer, here are three things worth sitting with.

1. What do I want the business to look like in three years? Which customers, which markets, which products and services, which brands. What my own role looks like. How the industry might look by then, whether we're ready for it, and what opportunities or risks come with it. What I want the finances to look like: revenue, margins, profit, cashflow, and my own income. Once you're clear on three years, your next twelve months becomes a step towards it. Skip this part and the plan tends to come out as a copy of the current year, which isn't growth, it's just keeping the same thing going.

2. Look back over the last 18 months to two years. What's working well and can keep helping you grow. Just as important, what isn't working and could be eased back or stopped altogether. Stopping is one of the hardest calls I see owners make. Resources are limited, though, and you can't grow while things that drag the business along stay in place. Even writing down what should stop, then giving yourself time to think through what it would really mean, the good and the bad, starts to make things clearer.

3. What are the three things that would make the biggest difference in the next twelve months? Picking three is the hard part. Businesses don't run short of ideas, they run short of the room to do them all at once. Write down ten, then circle the three that would have the most impact.

Picture running the business with that kind of clarity. You can tell your management and your team: this is where we're going in three years, these are the three things that will get us there, this is where our focus goes, and these are the things we're stopping so we have the time and resources to do them. That's the start of a plan.

I'll cover the next steps over the coming weeks. For now, if you put even these three points down on paper over the next while, the business starts to move from reactive to deliberate.

If it's something you'd like a hand with, you can email sharonkearns@sgk.ie for a confidential chat.