When was the last time you carefully considered your choices or how they might affect your business?

I believe choice is the act of careful selection, identifying preferences and exploring quality alternatives that lead to freedom.
Yet, how often do we approach our choices in such a deliberately thoughtful way?

As a business owner, it’s important to note that choice speaks to your commitment to building and growing your business while looking at all available options. Choice involves thoughtful decision-making and focuses on doing and being your best in life. More importantly, choice implies that there is an opportunity to have freedom and victory in all that you do.

Here’s an approach to mastering the art of choice so you can propel your business forward:

Revisit your business mission and tweak it. Remember to use your mission as a guide for what’s appropriate in, and specific for, your business. By the way, making the right choices for your business is nearly impossible if you don’t have a mission. If you find yourself lacking a mission now, then you need to pause and create one. Without your mission statement, you have no framework with which to operate your business.

Align your business priorities with your newfound or tweaked mission. This will help you focus on what’s important and tie your choices to these priorities. Review and repeat this consideration to account for changes in priorities based on other factors like timing, market information, or new opportunities. Reviewing your priorities regularly is important. Some do it daily, some weekly, and some monthly. Realistically it is a good idea to do all three. Stephen Covey’s "First Things First" Quadrants is an excellent tool for arranging your priorities.  Set each of your priorities in one of those four sections. Then review and adjust as needed. This will help you set goals specific to your priorities.

Set clear business goals specific to your priorities and match them to your business mission. For me it is important to position myself as a specialist in group coaching. That’s my priority and my goals must reflect that priority. Your mission partnered with clear business goals are guidelines for clear targets like your ideal client and defined niche. Just as you need to do with your priorities, you need to also revisit and revise your goals regularly so that your choices are consistently aligned with your mission and priorities.

By mastering the art of choice, you recognize the power you have to choose what happens in your business. It sounds simple and easy…and it truly is!  You’re well on your way to mastering the art of choice when you underscore what’s really important.  Prepare yourself for the freedom and fulfillment you’re creating. Remember, it IS a choice!

Now that you’ve looked at your mission, priorities and goals, it is now time to decide what you want to do to support your business:

What are you willing to do to support your business mission and priorities?  What are your intentions or rather your commitments to act?  How are you going to keep your intentions at the forefront of your choices and ultimately your actions?  How do these intentions reinforce your responsibility to build and maintain your business?

In your quest to shift to become CEO of your company, your success hinders on having a strong plan.

Do you have a solid, strategic plan yet?

If not, this is your personal nudge to create a plan that is proactive, purposeful, and highly strategic. It’s GREAT if you already have a plan. Continue reading to incorporate these key elements if they’re missing.

A strategic plan is a deliberate approach to your life and business. Your plan is filled with action steps to help you to turn your hopes and dreams into real, tangible outcomes and accomplishments. Your strategic plan concretizes your business vision, mission and goals. It describes the attainable approach you, and your team will use to meet the objectives of your business. Your plan contains achievable action steps which have been clearly communicated to the team so team members are ready to take action at any given moment. If for some reason you are unable to act on the plan, someone from your team is empowered and informed to take the ball and run with it in your absence.

It is smart to develop and maintain a strategic plan for your business. Bear in mind, your plan is a living, breathing record that you review often, adjust accordingly and monitor to evaluate the results of your efforts. While you’re in transition you can expect to make lots of changes — often. Give yourself permission to remain flexible and fluid without getting bogged down by change itself.

Build your strategic plan around your vision, mission, and goals of your business. Write them down. If these critical elements are floating around in your head, your team cannot move your plan forward in your absence. Adding these key ingredients to the mix will truly help you to stay on course because you’ll have a solid blueprint for running your business.

How’s your strategic plan looking now?

Where are your opportunities to adjust your plan of action?

What actions can you take to move your plan forward?

The start of a new year is an excellent time to develop, revisit or renew your strategic plan. Start with your business vision, mission and goals. When the strategies surface and you identify milestones, embrace each and every one as part of your plan of action. Remember you’re in transition and it’s perfectly fine to approach the learning curve and embrace new opportunities to grow.

I look forward to hearing more about strategic plan of action as you move from Entrepreneur to CEO.