Where Do You Go From Here?

BBC

Your business idea and what you need to bring it to life and launch it should now be clearer. Your own strengths and weaknesses should be clear to you; you’ve considered the effects of the external environment and your proposed market position. So now is the time to look ahead.

Matching your strengths to the opportunities you perceive and paying attention to any gaps or weaknesses in yourself or your team, especially those exposed to the threats you have identified, gives you a set of strategic actions to complete and objectives to aim for. The final task is to ensure that those objectives are the ones that will enable you to turn your idea into a successful product - implementation objectives.

It is easy enough to set broad objectives such as ‘to get rich’, or ‘to be my own boss’. But these are more unbounded wishes than objectives in the way the term is used in business. The final action before starting to implement your plans is to ensure that your implementation objectives are SMART. For each objective, you need to ask yourself:

Specific

Are they absolutely clear and unambiguous?

Measurable

Are there numbers that will tell you when you get there?

Achievable

Are you fairly sure it is not over-ambitious?

Resource-relevant

Do you have, or could you get, the necessary resources?

Timed

Is there a definite time (e.g. a final date) for fulfilment?

Don’t treat you SMART objectives as if they are set in stone, however. The business world is forever changing. Opportunities come and go, and new challenges await over the horizon.

If you feel confident that your idea is a good one and will support a viable business, start the concrete planning process to implement it right now!