Business Planning for Coaches

• Understand the benefits of creating an effective business plan

• Become familiar with an efficient tool for creating a business plan, including: assessing current state, creating vision and mission statements, defining measurable business objectives, creating strategies and action plans to deliver the envisioned results

• Apply the approach to creating a first draft mission statement for the participants’ own organization

Business planning…

• What’s in it for me?

• How do I do it?

• Let’s get started…

Business planning…

Planning is an unnatural process; it is much more fun to do something. The nicest thing about not planning is that failure comes as a complete surprise, rather than being preceded by a period of worry and depression.

Sir John Harvey-Jones

What gets in the way of planning?

Ways to Use a Business Plan

Annual Planning

• Organization• Project, Plan• Support functions• Leadership development• Budgeting

External Presentations

• External presentations• Volunteer recruitment• Alliance development• Strategic hires• Executive summary

Research and Development

• Conceptual draft for new programs• Framework for expansion• Proforma for M&A• “What-if” for reorganizing

Process, Performance Management

• Clear framework for measurement• Benchmark to measure progress against

priorities• Improve cross-functional communication• Create, reinforce culture of accountability

Alternative approaches

174 million!!!!

One Page Business Plan

The coaching exchange

Indentify

Discover

StrategizeClear the Way

Recap

Hendren, 2010

One Page Business Planning ProcessAssess

Vision

Mission

Objectives

Strategies

Action Plans

Your business as a series of threads…

Planning is a team sport…

Assessment of key functions

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10FTI ½ People Process Time $$ External

New Client Acquisition Service Delivery Professional Development

Marketing Public speaking Administrative Functions

Sales Productization of IP Profitability, Cash Flow

Strategic Alliances

Level of success: 1= disaster 10 = brilliantly successful

Assess

Assessment

Assessment of key functions

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10FTI ½ People Process Time $$ External

New Client Acquisition Service Delivery Professional Development

Marketing Public speaking Administrative Functions

Sales Productization of IP Profitability, Cash Flow

Strategic Alliances

Level of success: 1= disaster 10 = brilliantly successful

Assess

Vision Mission

Vision

• What type of company is this?

• What markets does it serve?

• What is the geographic scope?

• Who are the target customers?

• What are the key products and services?

• How big will the company be?

• What will revenues be?• How many employees will

there be?

What are you building?

Vision

Creating your vision statement…

Within the next ____ years grow __(company)__

Into a $ ( est sales )

(local/regional/national/global ) (type of business)

company providing

_________(2 or 3 of your key products) _____ to

______(2-3 of your key client/customer types) __.

North Texas Coaches 2013

Within the next three years, grow North Texas Coaches into a successfully run professional association with an annual budget of $80,000 that provides a rich offering of resources to develop and credential internal and external coaches serving organizations and individuals.

Vision

Mission

• Why does this business exist?

• What is our unique selling proposition?

• What are we committed to providing to our clients?

• What promise are we making to our clients?

• What wants, needs, desires, pain or problems do our products/services solve?

Why does this business exist?

Mission

Creating your mission statement…

We help ____(recipient of your services)_______

_______(goal or benefit of your services) _______

North Texas Coaches 2013

Grow and develop a competent coaching community that drives results for individual coaches and those they serve

Objectives

• Include a numerical value in each objective

• Can be graphed• Have clear timelines and

personal ownership

“Until you can measure something and express it in numbers, you have only the beginning of understanding.”

Lord Kelvin

What will be measured?

Objectives

Objectives

• Provide a quantitative pulse of the business

• Focus resources towards specific results

• To find success in a measurable manner

• Give people/organizations specific targets

• Establish a framework for accountability and incentives pay

• Minimize subjectivity and emotionalism

• Measure the end results of work effort

Well conceived Objectives:

North Texas Coaches 2013

• Increase total membership to 188• Increase average meeting attendance to 58• Increase the number of credentialed members by 10%• Increase corporate/internal coaches to 20% of

membership• Implement 1 major outreach event with Alliance

Partner• Submit quarterly human interest stories to PR wire• Attain an average program value survey of 4.5 out of 5

Objectives

Strategies

• Set the direction, philosophy, values

• Define the business model

• Establish guidelines for evaluating important decisions

• Set limits on what a company will do or will not do

How will this business be built?

Strategies are broad statements, covering multiple years that:

What will move the objectives?

Strategies

Strategy

Strengths Weaknesses

Opportunities Threats

Internal

External

Competitive Strategy

Porter, 1980

North Texas Coaches 2013

• Strengthen the chapter membership experience to best-in-class levels• Base programming on a comprehensive survey of member needs and

preferences• Broaden the content, venue, and timing of chapter programming to

meet member needs• Strike an effective balance of program objectives between core

competencies and resource development• Develop a powerful communications toolkit to enable telling the story of

coaching and our chapter program• Make Coaching Week a showcase of coaching and its power• Develop and strengthen our alliances with the North Texas HR

community• Create a best-in-class Prism program to increase awareness of the value

of coaching• Deepen our alignment with ICF global and regional initiatives

Strategy

Action Plans

• Major business – building projects

• Significant infrastructure projects

• Programs or projects that bend the curves and or trend lines

Defining the work to be done

Work may be defined in three ways:

Description of Work + Owner + Completion Date

Action Plans

Planning Wheel

Q1Q4

Q3 Q2

North Texas Coaches 2013

• By Feb, survey members who attended ≤ 2 meetings/events in CY 2012

• By Jan, survey members on types of programs, workshops they would like to experience.

• By Feb, launch the redesigned website with easier navigation and updated visual appeal while offering analytic insights for future changes.

• By Mar, publish one coaching related press release, photograph on PR Wire

• By Mar, form nucleus of aligned organizations seeking opportunities to collaborate

• By Mar, obtain commitments for 4 PRISM nominees and 3 medal (gold/silver/bronze) sponsors

• By Mar, drive the creation of purpose, goals and actions for the ICF Southeast Region

Action Plans

No plan survives…

“No plan survives first contact with the enemy”

Baron von Moltke

Prussian Field Marshall

Review and Cadence

Set a review cadence that suits your business that is appropriate to how fast things are changing…

Actual Results to Plan

“Plans are useless…”

“In preparing for battle, I have always found that plans are useless but planning is indispensable.”

Dwight Eisenhower

Questions?

Jim CooperPrincipal, Ascendent Leadership

Jim.cooper@ascendentleadership.com

972-578-7035

Business Planning for Coaches