BOOK SUMMARY 309 Start at the End
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Summary written by: Peter Taylor
“If you don't know where you’re going, you
probably won't get there.”
- Yogi Berra, Start at the End, page 1
This statement reflects Dave Lavinsky’s philosophy around
business growth based on the concept of where you want to go, writing it down,
and referring to it on a regular basis. The book is aimed at new or existing
entrepreneurs without formal MBA training who, despite having strong motivation
to keep their businesses successful, invariably become bogged down in day to
day managerial issues, and forget about their long term aspirations that
originally inspired them to start a business.
The book is loosely based around Covey’s second habit
from The Seven Habits
of Highly Effective People:
“Begin with the end in mind.” Instead of a theoretical discussion, Lavinsky’s
book gives a clear set of instructions, templates, and action steps to
implement within your business. These steps are clear, simple, and easy to
implement. In business it is imperative to have a vision of where you want to
go, if you focus on plans of achieving those end goals as opposed to focusing
on short term problems your business will flourish, Lavinsky gives us the tools
to achieve this. The key is to start at the end: figure out where you want to
go, and reverse engineer the process to get there.
The Golden Egg
Documenting your Plan
"If your business can’t operate without you, it's
not a business, instead it's a job and possibly a miserable one."- Start
at the End, page 206
This book is designed primarily to generate your
strategic plan. This is your road map for the future. He theorizes that the
process of generating your plan and then reading and addressing it regularly
will get your subconscious mind used to the fact that it can be accomplished,
plus it eliminates any confusion, gives clarity to any employees and allows
outsiders to assess the business quickly. The strategic plan includes your long
term vision and aspirations, while planning is restricted to a twelve month period.
This gives business sufficient time to allow constant analysis and measurements
of actuals versus expected results.
There are ten key areas with a strategic plan:
1. Executive summary: this is simply a summary of the most
important parts of your strategy, what your business does, and what market it
serves. It must also include your unique success factors, which are 4 to 7
reasons why your business will succeed.
2. Company vision statements: Most readers will be familiar
with vision and mission statements. What sets Lavinsky’s concept apart is the
idea of both an old school customer focused vision, and a business focused
vision including future sale price, expected EDITDA’s and revenues that will
get you there.
3. Opportunities to pursue: What you choose to pursue in the
way of opportunities this year and your “why.” For example, moving your
business online or opening in a new site.
4. Goals and milestones: Documentations of expected
financial metrics and business assets over five years, one year, quarterly and
monthly financials.
5. Financial metrics and KPI’s: Documentation of tracked
KPI’s historically, their expected values in the future and any new KPI’s to be
measured.
6. Business Assets: Documentation of business assets you
need to develop in the coming year and the individual projects. This includes
team training, new services, more customers, etc.
7. Systematization Plan: Documentation of ongoing system
development priorities and the team member responsible for implementation.
\8. Marketing plan: Documentation of your marketing plan, how
you get new customers, improve lead generation, conversion rates, optimize
transaction value and maximize lifetime customer value.
9. Human resources plan: Identify new employees that you
need to hire this year and outline any training for key team members to
ensure the business model is adhered to.
10.
Financial projections: Identify ways the
company generates income, whether you need to borrow money for new projects,
only include key financial projections and break it down into monthly budgets.
The implementation and generation of a strategic plan was
relatively easy for my own business using the downloadable templates. Potential
investors were very impressed—a good enough reason to purchase the book alone.
Gem #1
Simple Extras
"In giving you these ideas, I not only wanted you to
receive immediate gains, but I wanted to show you that you can always be making
incremental improvements to your business."- Start at the End, page 204
Some of the best strategies are left towards the end of
the book as extras to include in your thinking, and include the following
ideas:
Do more of what works.
Lavinsky tells a story that describes an engineer who decided to start his own
consulting business after working in another company for 20 years. He built up
the firm over 30 years to be relatively successful and generated over several
million in revenue. He died at the age of 72 and left his wife the business.
His wife had never run a business before, however after 12 months profits had
doubled.
Her strategy was simple: she liaised with management and
told them to do two things;
1. Make a list of the five things that worked the best in
the last 12 months and
2. Make a list of things that worked the least in the last
12 months.
She then instructed the team to do more of the things
that worked and stop doing the five things that didn’t. So simple, and yet, so
effective. Stick to strategies that work and stop trying fix things that don’t.
Advisory Board.
Another easy strategy is to develop an advisory board. Choose successful people
whom you respect to use as mentors/advisors. The cost is minimal and advisors
can act as sounding boards, generate practical ideas, set goals and give access
to valuable connections. Quarterly or monthly meetings are ideal.
Gem #2
Delegation
"The fact is this: Delegating tasks to others can
save you a great deal of time and allow you to focus that time on the highest
value-added tasks."- Start at the End, page 161
It is critical to delegate effectively. Lavinsky
discusses 6 steps to improve your skills in delegating.
1. Identify the correct person: the right person should have
the requisite skills to do the task.
2. Clearly define the project: this includes your why,
completion date and clarity around the purpose.
3. Discuss the plan of action: give specifics about how the
person can complete the task, pay attention to details, and treat the work as a
process (rather than a task), ideally documenting the process for future use.
4. Have them repeat back the plan: repeat until they get the
process right.
5. Monitor progress and provide feedback: check in and
provide feedback to monitor progress at previously identified time schedules.
6. Evaluate Performance: a very important step that is often
missed for several reasons. If they do an average job and there is no feedback,
then that average job will become the norm. Explain why they did a great job
and explain if there is room for improvement, using concrete examples.
Effective delegation makes you replaceable, which is a
good thing.
Start at the End is
full of inspirational ideas to take your business to the next level, and the
tools available make it an invaluable asset to any business. Planning your
business with your end goals in mind will help you stay on track, and avoid
getting bogged down in day to day details.
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