The economy is erratic.  Consumers are afraid to spend because of potential layoffs and mortgage interest changes.  Inflation is predicted and tax increases are a certainty. 

How is it possible to apply business management techniques so you can manage your business in a “risk-free” environment?  Using a “short plan” could be the best answer available.

The shortest meaningful cycle of review is weekly.  It is the shortest period within which most complete business information may be generated to support profitable decisions. Most businesses run on a weekly schedule. We have weekly project runs, weekly schedules. The week has a beginning and an end for many businesses. We usually think in terms of weeks. And, the largest expense item in most businesses, payroll, is usually incurred in a week. 

And, because we think in terms of weeks, plan our activities by the week, direct and schedule our employee tasks and duties by the week and spend money by the week, it only makes common sense to "manage by the week.

A week is an efficient time period for follow-up. It is also a short enough time-period for follow-up to be purposeful in assuring that the business enterprise does not squander too many scarce resources on inappropriate, ill defined plans, actions or strategies. If we are going to examine our course of action we know exactly what we risk if we are wrong. Knowing what our exposure is in the future renders decision making fact-based and promotes pro-action. Instead of reacting to events by believing that we cannot impact on their outcome, we act to assure events and control the outcome of the event.

It forces the business manager to define problems, difficulties, deviations sooner rather than later, providing the maximum amount of time to solve the problem, or correct the deviation. So, the weekly approach assures that you are never more than a week away from defining and dealing with any topic, item, issue or event that is outside of your plan.  And, because you have identified the "problem" within a week you have "more" time to solve it and reap the benefits of the solution.

If you are actually spending more money on any item during the week than you planned, and you do not look at your expense and compare it to your planned/budgeted expense for a month, you have spent more than you planned for four weeks. Your cost for "not" checking your expense is four times greater than it would have been if you had adopted and applied the weekly short approach. You have not only lost four times as much as you would have in the short interval approach, you have failed to reap the savings of four weeks of spending what you had planned to spend. Not attacking your results weekly; costs you both an increase in costs and a loss of savings. The sooner you check your plan; the sooner you can control your costs. The sooner you can control your costs and take advantage of the savings, the sooner you will impact positively on your "bottom line".

It also leads you to determine if you are doing better than you had planned and assures your continued application of that combination of factors that has produced "better" results than planned. Each week we develop a plan of action and the results that plan of action is intended to achieve. We define weekly objectives. We then set out into the week carrying out our functions, performing our tasks, striving to accomplish our assigned objectives. At the end of the week we review our objective accomplishments and determine if we achieved what we planned to achieve for the week. We evaluate our results, and either continue our plan for the next week or change our plan for the next week to assure that we accomplish our objectives.

How do we know that our objectives are the right objectives? The answer to this question is found in the Annual Forecast/Budget which defines our plan for the year: what our sales will be. What it will cost us to generate those sales. And, what we have planned to have left over as profit at the end of the year. These are our annual objectives. The best way to assure that you can do what you want to do for the year is, then, to break those annual objectives down into the smallest practical unit, the smallest common denominator. The most practical common denominator, as we have already defined, is a weekly objective. We simply divide the annual objectives for revenues, expenses and profits by 52 to arrive at our weekly objectives. If you sell what you plan to sell, spend what you plan to spend and the relationship between these revenues and expenses produces a profit; you will absolutely be left with the profit you have planned at the end of the year. There is no other outcome possible. None!

The short plan provides the management team the opportunity, allows the team the luxury, of adapting procedures and objectives "now", if it is determined that they are not hitting their targets, threatening their planned profit. We know today how far away we are from our plan and therefore what we need to do today, to get back on track. All that remains for the management team to do is alter their plan and act to catch up with the plan. The short plan provides the management team with the best opportunity to act to assure that you are doing as you planned and therefore earning the profit you have planned to earn.