Run your life like a company in 2014
A friend of mine last week asked me about my main resolutions for this year. As we were exchanging ideas, I liked his overarching resolution for 2014—to run his personal life like a company! I was so intrigued by this that I asked for his permission to publish his idea in this week’s edition of Rise and Shine. We owe great gratitude to Mr. DK for this.
According to Mr. DK, running one’s personal life like a company first of all means that one has to have a full plan for the year. This plan should include an annual financial budget. How many of us develop a financial budget for the whole year at the start of the New Year? May be some accountants and economists do that at home some of the time.
Going by Mr. DK’s approach, we need to outline the total income we expect in the year and how much we expect to spend. The budget needs to balance upfront. If there are some gaps or deficit, we need to find clever ways of closing those gaps. We may need to reduce some of the expenses or find clever ways of generating extra income to cover for the expenses that may not be honoured.
This approach also means that we need to review our personal performance for the year just ended and explore what we need to do to improve on our life. No company plans to perform at the same level as the previous year. Almost all companies seek to continuously grow their business, year upon year. In our personal lives too, we need to continuously grow and progress. What are the key things that we will do this year that will give us that new growth or progress?
To achieve these great goals, companies draw up strategies, rules, policies and processes that guide them. They all have to abide by these instruments without exception. That total alignment with the key operating instruments, give the companies a better chance of achieving their goals than if it did not matter whether they abide by the instruments or not. This means that in personal lives too, we need to draw up key strategies and rules that we need to follow in order to achieve our goals for the year. We need total adherence to our stretched goals and we need to abide by all rules if we are to end the year on a positive note.
When companies plan for the year, they typically scan the environment around them, as they conduct the Swot analysis, looking at their strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats expected in the years. At a personal level, have we also scanned the environment around us? What are we good at that will help us excel in 2014? What are our weaknesses that we need to guard against and external threats that we need to protect ourselves from? What about on the positive side, what new opportunities that the year 2014 present to us that we need to exploit and make good use to take our lives to next heights?
Companies are so serious about the need to achieve their goals that they put in place measures for regular reviews of their performance against the plans. They do this on quarterly basis (every three months), on a monthly basis as well as on a weekly basis. Some of the key performance parameters are checked on a daily basis. Do we have any mechanisms to track our personal progress on a quarterly basis, or monthly or weekly basis? May be this is the time for us to incorporate regular reviews for our personal goals and progress as the year 2014 builds up and passes by.
Today, we have considered the notion of running our personal lives like a company. It is clear that if we can incorporate some of the strategies and tactics that companies use to excel, we too can easily rise and shine! Good luck as you run your personal life in 2014 and as you begin a new chapter of success!
