My work is in chaos, everything that comes to me is important and urgent, forcing me to solve it. I feel like I am being dragged into it. I try to find a solution…
By increasing my working hours and intensity, the pressure of work gradually exhausted me. My subordinates as well as the departments in my company seemed to lack cohesion in their activities. All they could do was to push the problem to the superiors for decision…
At some point managers have to face this situation and it is then that they face the lack of a sound business and production plan.
Usually in the early stages when the scale of operations is still small, not many Vietnamese businesses realize the importance of building a systematic business plan. Due to the small scale, all activities seem to be under the control of the business owner or manager. They maintain a way of working by solving events and the harmony between team members like in a family. Over time, the situation gradually changes, even in some businesses, the situation changes rapidly. The scale of production and business activities "swells" rapidly with the "hot" development of Vietnamese society. The competition is becoming increasingly fierce in the market of goods and services ... as well as in the market of human resources. Development is a good sign for businesses but also pushes them into an imbalanced situation. Managers gradually lose control of the situation. Personal efforts are not enough to compensate for the shortage created by work pressure. Dealing with events that are incapable of overall coherence in a direction that runs throughout the entire company… This reality pushes managers – who are strangers to planning, who consider planning to be a purely theoretical task – into a reality that forces them to stop and plan their moves more wisely.
Business planning is in fact an indispensable tool for managers and like any other tool it requires managers to have the skills to use it professionally.
Many managers are not proficient in using this tool. They complain that plans are just “drawn” on paper. Plans are never implemented. Even worse, employees never implement or even know what is in their plans. The biggest mistake these managers make is that they fail to answer the two biggest questions in a business plan. The task question and the people question.
To answer the question in terms of work, a business plan must be derived from the analysis of the chain of production and business activities. Starting from the market - consumers to distribution channels, companies, competitors to production and supply activities. From the results of these analyses, managers synthesize and draw out the key points that determine the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats for the company (SWOT).
Turning back to the strengths, what will the company have to do to exploit opportunities, overcome weaknesses and limit threats that may occur. From these analyses, managers can determine for themselves a goal to aim for and strive to achieve their goal by dividing it into goals in each specific stage. Build strategies, ways to achieve those goals and concretize them into action plans with appropriate resources and costs. One thing to note - this is also the most common mistake in managers - is that the goals in specific stages must ensure the basic criteria: Specific, measurable, ambitious, achievable, compatible and time-bound (SMART). In addition, it is necessary to answer the questions: Why do it? Who will do it? What will be done? Where will it be done? And how will it be done? Furthermore, the business plan must be placed in the context of the overall corporate strategy with consistency and continuity…
With the method described above, we have somewhat generalized the answer in terms of work. However, answering the question in terms of work is not enough, managers need to answer the question in terms of people. Do the participants believe in the plan given by their superiors? Do they believe in the leader who leads them? Does completing the plan or not have any meaning or impact on them? The goals are SMART to managers, but are they SMART to them? … If the answer is no, the manager has not really answered the question in terms of people. That means that no matter how carefully a plan is calculated, analyzed and built, it will still only exist on paper and has a high risk of failure. In other words, managers need to see the problem as two sides of a hand, one side is work and the other side is people. Without one of these two aspects, a complete business plan or hand cannot be created.
With a well-planned business plan, managers help the entire company have an overall vision for future activities with clear goals. It is the basis for allocating time and cost resources in order of priority. It is the foundation for coordination between departments as well as monitoring, supervision and motivation. It is the key to help businesses on the professional path to success.
Vu Huu Manh – Unicom
