What’s the plan for 2016?

An imperfect plan is better than nothing. Don’t wait. Now is the time to jot down some 2016 planning notes.

The plan will likely be ugly. It’ll be inadequate. It’ll be imperfect.

That’s okay. An imperfect plan is the best kind of plan. In fact, it’s the only kind of plan. No one ever gets it exactly right.

A plan, any plan—imperfect or not—is better than running the show without a plan.

What Happens When You Don’t Have a Plan

“What’s the plan?” I ask. Mumble, mumble, mumble is the typical response.

When I push, I usually get something that sounds like, “We’re building a law firm that looks like that other, more successful firm down the street.”

Maybe that plan would work if we had any insight into what they did, how they did it, or what the market was like when they did it. Sadly, we’re usually making lots of guesses about how they achieved their success, and those guesses are often wrong.

What if you’d known these facts:

The law firm down the street is led by a married guy. His wife’s brother worries that she married a dud. The brother is very successful. He owns several businesses and invests in a number of others. He sends his company business to the firm. When he places an investment, he advises those companies to use the firm, and he spends time promoting the firm in his social circles. He wants to be sure his sister is financially secure. Fantasy? Nope, true story.

So is the plan to imitate that firm down the street? Good, then all you need to do is marry his other sister, and you’re all set.

If you’re not going to marry the sister, then maybe it’s time to start thinking about 2016. What do you say?

What Your Plan Should Look Like

The plan can be done in a word processor, on a spreadsheet, or on the back of a napkin. Any plan is better than no plan.

The plan should address marketing, management, technology, and finance. The plan requires some thinking, dreaming, and formulating a vision of how things will look better before 2016 ends.

Here are four topics for consideration.

• Marketing. Who is your ideal client? How will you reach that person? What’s working? What’s not? What would you like to add to the mix? What stories will you tell your audiences? How will you generate referrals? Will you advertise? Will you network? Will you mix things up?

• Management. How will you encourage, train, and lift your team? How will you get everyone in alignment? What will you do next year that you couldn’t do this year? How will you weed out weakness and add strength? How will you elevate the performance of the team? What systems will be developed to strengthen the business? It is time to outsource? How can you achieve variability in expenses?

• Technology. Where are the weaknesses? Where is the money going? What’s the largest opportunity for improvement? What’s holding us back? What’s our security weakness? Is it time for paperless? Document management? Practice management? New voice/text systems? Encryption? Automated workflows?

• Finance. How much are we spending on accounting? How can we systematize those processes and improve them? How can we eliminate financial stress? How can we better drive the business with data and reporting? How can we accumulate reserves?

Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Do some planning for next year. Come up with something. Set the bar low. Keep it simple. Go ahead and put together your imperfect plan.