Your Very Own Blue Ocean Strategic Plan

At this time of year, it seems natural to think of the past and the future. The year ahead is full of promise and has the potential to be everything we want it to be. How can we make it all happen? Do you find yourself in a Red Ocean or in a Blue Ocean?

A client once said : “I’m really good at writing a strategic plan for my business, but I don’t know how to do something like that for my own life!”. It seems ironic that we dedicate ourselves to planning our work : setting targets, outlining goals and milestones and charting a pathway for achieving them all. Yet, how often do we take the same skills and apply them to the things in our own life? Aren’t the things in our lives just as important?

Just like the business strategic plan, your life’s strategic plan starts with a vision and sense of direction. Without those, well……..you know the story.

And, are you charting a course for the Blue Ocean? I highly recommend reading the book “Blue Ocean Strategy” (Kim & Maurbogne), if you need a refresher on how to re-vision yourself and everything you do. Do you define yourself through comparing to others, benchmarking and generally just trying to outcompete them? Or, have you found a way to leave the competition behind by re-defining what you are doing in a way so that the competition doesn’t matter? What’s your Vision?

Ok, here’s my Vision for 2010 : to grow my coaching practice while maintaining a great work/life balance. Sounds simple, doesn’t it? Both halves of the statement are tips of icebergs. What do I really mean by “growing my coaching practice”? What’s entailed in that? Lots of business development activities to be sure, sharpening my saw (continuous learning and professional development), working with my own coach to help me stay clear and focused, being on the look-out for opportunities, writing proposals and the list goes on. I suspect we can all easily fill in the remaining bits of strategies and tactics to grow this little business.

What about our lives, though? Isn’t growing this business just one part of my life? What about the rest – my relationships, taking care of myself, fun and adventure, fitness, health and spiritual well-being, giving to my community? What’s my plan?

Writing these words has made me realize that “maintaining a great work/life balance” isn’t really a very good vision statement. What I need to replace it with is :

- Being a loving partner to my spouse,

- Being a loving father to my children,

- Being a true friend to my friends,

- Being fit, strong and healthy,

- Being spiritually alive and in tune,

- Having a learner’s outlook all the time,

- Helping others in my community.

These are all things I want to be in 2010. That’s what I envision my life to be like this coming year. If I am able to be all these things, I think I’ll have great work/life balance. Each one of these ways of being has its own set of strategies and tactics : things I will do to make it happen. And, of course, they all inter-relate, even with my goal of growing the business. After all, I’m a whole person and everything’s connected to everything.

We admire leaders who are grounded in their vision and are able to share it with others in ways that are eloquent, inspiring and galvanize us to action. Be that way with yourself! Write out your Vision for yourself – the act of writing will become the first step in the act of achieving. Stealing a phrase from sports psychology – if you can see it, you can do it!

It’s not that all the rest is details, but, actually all the rest is details.

Happy New Year!