As 2023 wraps up, you might be wondering when to outline 2024 plans for your business. Though you may still be dedicating a lot of time to your present goals, a successful business must also remember to look toward the future.
This is all part of strategic planning, defined broadly as a process of determining what actions a business needs to take over a period of time to reach their goals.
When Should You Outline Plans and Goals for 2024?
Most professionals in today’s workforce assert that businesses should begin outlining their plans and goals for the upcoming year somewhere around the end of Q3 or (at the latest) the start of Q4. So, if you haven’t set aside some time yet, be sure to do it soon!
Opinions vary due to factors like size and scope, but the consensus holds that anywhere from August to October can work. Bottom line: whatever you do, don’t wait until January 1st!
And that means it’s time to get started on that strategic plan!
The Basics of Strategic Planning
“Strategic planning is a process used by organizations to identify their goals, the strategies necessary to accomplish those goals and the internal performance management system used to monitor and evaluate progress.” – Indeed for Employers
The requirements for creating a strategic plan can depend on what you’re trying to accomplish, but in general, there are a few main steps you need to take to draft an effective strategic plan. These include defining your overall vision, responsibilities, and priorities, looking at where you are currently, and logging the results that come forth.
We will provide some examples of starting points for creating a strategic plan later on in this article. But first, let’s get into some pointers for outlining goals for the upcoming year.
How to Outline 2024 Plans
After you develop a sense of where you currently stand, you can better determine what actionable goals you need to work towards to reach greater success.
Most professional advice for creating strategic plans, as we mentioned earlier, lists similar checkpoints, starting with those essential questions. But after that’s said and done, you’ll get to the harder part of planning your upcoming year, which is strategizing and implementing what you actually want to do. Here’s our recommended to-do list; we encourage you to adapt it as needed since all businesses are unique!
- Analyze what you have right now: A commonly used tool for this is performing a SWOT analysis on your business. SWOT stands for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. Visit this website for more information on what a SWOT analysis is and how to do one.
- Set goals: Goal-setting and key performance indicators (KPIs) go hand in hand, especially when creating clear, measurable goals. Using the SMART goal framework is an extremely helpful tool for this step.
- Get specific: Prioritization is key here! You might have a laundry list of things you want to accomplish in 2024, and that’s great, but it’s also important to recognize that you may need to place some things higher up on the to-do list than others. You don’t want to stretch yourself (or your team) too thin and end up with a bad case of burnout at the start of your year.
- Evaluate the results: Our buzzwords of choice for evaluating success are alignment and reporting. It’s important to ensure that your short-term goals for a given year are aligned with your overall business strategy and long-term goals. And, you need to have the right tools to measure and analyze results (for both successes AND shortcomings).
Collaboration is critical in business – regardless of the time of year – to create a strategic plan for 2024 that sets you up for success. Make sure that the needs, opinions, and goals of your entire team are represented, and your plan for the upcoming year will be that much more effective for it.
Resources & Final Thoughts
We’ve compiled a short list of resources for businesses that are beginning the process of planning goals for 2024. Whether it’s your first year running a small business, or you’re an established professional just looking for some inspiration, we hope these links can be of benefit to you.
- A good starting point for when you’re ready to plan your 2024 goals
- Strategic planning advice for small businesses
- Examples of common goals set by small businesses to give you some inspiration
At KSR, we have some great strategic planning experience under our belt. If you have questions on anything we covered today or are looking to partner with someone that can help you achieve your goals for 2024, reach out to us!
That’s all we have for today – we’ve got to get back to work on our own strategic plan for 2024!
