Simply Stated:
Understanding your own preferences toward business planning can ensure you get to highlight your natural strengths.
As an “action oriented” workplace personality, creativity and hands on action are your greatest contributions to the team.
Stretching your skills in other areas may be necessary to ensure the team is cohesive and all aspects of a great plan are developed.
For action oriented workplace personalities, the business planning process is likely perceived as a necessary evil. Intellectually this personality type understands the value but the actual mechanism and process is to be endured and completed as quickly as possible to get on with the actual running and making of the business. The following post is intended to help clearly identify specific preferences, strengths and challenges for the action oriented workplace personality, so the planning process can optimize your strengths and minimize challenges and allow you to full appreciate team mates with a different perspective.
For action oriented workplace personalities the following are the key preferences:
Creative and intuition based discussions.
Look to what can be done, not what has been done.
Focus on tangible action plans that can be met and surpassed.
As you move through each of the stages of business planning keep the following strengths and challenges in mind:
1. Preparation for the business planning meeting.
Key strength: Understanding what is happening in the marketplace, what are competitors doing right and wrong.
Key challenge: Documentation of insights to help support arguments.
2. The business planning meeting itself.
Key strength: Leading the discussion on initiatives into unchartered areas that could have large pay back.
Key challenge: Full attention and really listening to other team mates ideas especially if they are around administrative processes.
3. Development of strategies and action plans.
Key strength: Pushing the team to stretch goals, to attempt new ways of doing things to improve results.
Key challenge: Keeping others up to date on progress, documenting results relative to the plan.
4. Ongoing management of the business plan.
Key strength: Keeping it hands on practical, if something sounded good in theory but once execution comes into play doesn’t quite pan out, the action oriented workplace personality will either give hands on feedback or take action to bridge the gap between theory and practice.
Key challenge: Sticking to the plan and not being enticed to try something new that comes up after the planning process has locked things down.
Reflecting on your preferences, strengths and challenges can make you a more effective team member and help produce a comprehensive business plan. Read about your structure oriented team mate here and watch for follow up posts on the 2 other workplace personalities to see how they approach the process and things to watch for to ensure the group is effective as possible.
Lynn