.
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The big picture
- What is the time frame for my life strategy: 1 year, 3 year, 5 year, 10 year?
- Where am I now?
- How did I get to where I am today?
- Where do I want to go to from here (taking my purpose and vision into account)?
- How do I get from where I am today to where I want to be in the future?
- What obstacles will I have to overcome?
- How can I break my vision and purpose into specific and measurable goals?
- What are key initiatives I can implement in each area of my life to move towards my goals and maximise well-being for myself and loved ones?
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Having clear purpose, vision and values
- What is my life purpose? Why do I do what I do? How can I contribute and make a difference to the world? What do I want to be remembered for?
- What is my vision and how clear is it?
- Does my vision and purpose truly inspire me?
- What matters most to me in life?
- What values and principles do I want to live my life by?
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Defining and measuring success
- Given my purpose, vision and values, how can I best define success in my life?
- Does my definition of success include measures of well-being for myself and loved ones? If not, why not?
- How can I measure my success? How can I measure and track my progress along the way?
- What long term goals can I set that, by achieving them, will indicate significant progress in the direction of my vision and purpose?
- What are the key criteria that will contribute to success?
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Understanding and developing my value offerings
- What are my core offerings and what value does it add to the world?
- In what way is my offering unique and valuable? How do I sustain that unique value?
- What do my customers most value about my offering?
- How can I add more value to my offering? How can I make it more unique?
- If I closed my doors today, would my customers suffer a real loss?
- In what ways does my offering leverage my strengths, talents, skills and passions?
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Understanding the people who I serve with my value offering
- Who are the people out in the world who I serve with my value offerings? (e.g. my boss, the company I work for, community groups, actual customers etc.)
- What are their unmet needs? How can my offering and strategy address them?
- What values do I share with them?
- How can I strengthen my relationship with them and create win win outcomes?
- Who are the stakeholders within my inner circle (i.e. my loved ones and dependents)? Is their well-being part of my life purpose and vision?
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Allocating resources (time, energy, finances) in order to achieve my purpose, vision and goals
- What resources and capabilities do I use?
- Am I allocating my resources according to what matters most to me?
- How can I better allocate and manage my time, energy and finances?
- How can I invest my time, energy and finances to get the best return on well-being and contribution?
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Leveraging my strengths
- What are my core competencies and strengths (skills, talents, areas of expertise, passions)?
- What are my strengths and skills that I enjoy using most?
- What do I do better than anyone else?
- What do others see as my strengths?
- What advantages do I have? What unique resources can I draw upon that others can’t?
- How do I and can I stand apart from my competitors?
- How is what I offer unique? What is my unique selling proposition?
- How can I best leverage my talents, strengths and passions in creating and sharing my value offering?
.
Understanding my weaknesses
- What are my development areas? What could I improve?
- What limits me currently? What do I need to transcend? What should I avoid? What should I stop doing?
- What do others see as my weaknesses?
.
Identifying opportunities
- What opportunities can I spot?
- What interesting trends am I aware of?
- What areas of my life, by focusing on them, offer the greatest potential for fulfilment and well-being?
.
Identifying threats
- What obstacles do I face?
- Do I have debt or cash-flow problems?
- Could any of my weaknesses seriously threaten the well-being of myself and loved ones?
- What could disrupt my life? What strategic uncertainties keep me awake at night?
- What could a competitor do to hurt me?
- How do I and can I prepare for uncertainty?
.
Understanding my competitors
- Do I have competitors? If so, who are they?
- What are my competitors doing and offering?
- How do I stand apart from my competition? How is what I offer unique?
- When do I choose to compete and when do I choose to collaborate?
.
Growing, learning, evolving
- What is limiting me? How can I transcend my limits?
- How can I grow? How can I fulfil my potential? How can I challenge and stretch myself?
- What skills should I develop? What can I learn?
- How can I develop myself to enhance my offering and increase well-being?
- How can I invest in my competencies? What capabilities do I need to be successful in the future?
- What’s the best way to innovate?
.
Investing in my relationships
- What mentors and role models can inspire and teach me?
- Who can I collaborate and co-operate with in order to increase the value of my offering and share it more widely or deeply?
- How can I make use of partnerships? What can we do together that we cannot do alone?
- How can I invest in my relationships to make them more robust, healthy and fulfilling?
- How can I make my relationships win-win?
- What is my communication style? How can I make it more effective?
- How do I manage conflict? How can I be more effective?
- Who do I need to get buy in from to help my life strategy succeed?
.
Managing risk
- What is my appetite for risk?
- Am I being overly cautious or overly impulsive or reckless?
- What are some intelligent risks I can take (where the potential upside far exceeds the potential downside?)
- How can I manage risks and threats? What contingency plans should I make?
.
Identifying initiatives in each key area of my life
- What are the key areas of my life that matter to me (e.g. relationships, career, finances, personal development, health, spiritual connection, leisure etc.)
- How can I ensure the important areas of my life align with and support each another?
- What are some key initiatives I can implement in each area of my life to increase my success and well-being?
.
Drawing up an action plan
- What should I do more of? What should I quit doing? What should I initiate?
- What are key initiatives I can implement in each key life area to maximise success and well-being?
- For each key initiative, what are the actions required?
- What actions will be rolled out, in which order and by when?
- What are the key milestones? What deadlines can I set?
- What are simple daily habits I can implement to enhance my success and well-being?
- What is the very next thing I can do to move my strategy forwards?
- Is my long-term view reflected in my short-term priorities?
- How do I effectively balance short and long-term priorities?
.
Creating streamlined processes and leveraging tools
- How can I make smarter decisions and more conscious choices?
- What processes (repeatable sets of actions) in my life can I improve and streamline?
- How can I use technology and tools to streamline my life?
- How can I work smarter? How can I achieve more with less?
- Do I have a system for managing my daily tasks?
- Do I have a weekly or monthly review process?
.
Tracking and reviewing progress and adapting the strategy
- How can I track and review my progress?
- How often should I review progress on my plan?
- When should I change or update my plan?
- How do I make my plan flexible to allow for changes?
.
.
The big picture
- What is the time frame for our business strategy: 1 year, 3 year, 5 year, 10 year?
- Where are we now?
- How did we get to where we are today?
- Where do we want to go to from here (taking our purpose and vision into account)?
- How do we get from where we are today to where we want to be in the future?
- What obstacles will we have to overcome?
- How can we break our vision and purpose into specific and measurable goals?
- What are key initiatives we can implement in each area of the business to move towards our goals and maximise well-being and profitability?
.
Having clear purpose, vision and values
- What is our purpose? Why do we do what we do? How can we contribute and make a difference to the world?
- What is our vision and how clear is it?
- Does our vision and purpose truly inspire?
- What matters most to us?
- What values and principles do we believe in and want to operate by?
.
Defining and measuring success
- Given our purpose, vision and values, how can we best define success?
- How can we measure our success? How can we measure and track our progress along the way?
- What long term goals can we set that, by achieving them, will indicate significant progress in the direction of our vision and purpose?
- What are the key criteria that will contribute to success?
.
Understanding and developing our value offerings
- What are our core offerings and what value do we add to the world?
- In what way is our offering unique and valuable? How do we sustain that unique value?
- What do our customers most value most about our offering?
- How can we add more value to our offering? How can we make it more unique?
- If we closed our doors today, would our customers suffer a real loss?
- In what ways does our offering leverage our strengths, talents, skills and passions?
.
Understanding our customers and stakeholders
- Who are the customers who we serve with our value offerings?
- Who are our ideal target customers?
- What are our customers’ unmet needs? How can our offering and strategy address them?
- How are our customers changing and what might they want in the future?
- What values do we share with our customers?
- How can we attract new customers?
- How can we strengthen our relationship with our customers and create win win outcomes?
- Who are our stakeholders? What value do we add to these stakeholders? How can we increase this value?
- How can we invest in our stakeholder relationships to build trust, openness and create win-win outcomes?
.
Allocating resources (time, energy, finances) in order to achieve our purpose, vision and goals
- What resources and capabilities do we use?
- Are we allocating our resources according to what matters most to me?
- How can we better allocate and manage our time, energy and finances?
- How can we invest our time, energy and finances to get the best return?
.
Leveraging our strengths
- What are our core competencies and strengths (skills, talents, areas of expertise, passions)?
- What do we do better than anyone else?
- What do others see as our strengths?
- What advantages do we have? What unique resources can we draw upon that others can’t?
- How do we and can we stand apart from our competitors?
- How is what we offer unique? What is our unique selling proposition?
- How can we best leverage our talents, strengths and passions in creating and sharing our value offering?
.
Understanding our weaknesses
- What are our development areas? What could we improve?
- What limits us currently? What do we need to transcend? What should we avoid? What should we stop doing?
- What do others see as our weaknesses?
.
Identifying opportunities
- What opportunities can we spot?
- What interesting trends are we aware of?
- What areas of our business, by focusing on them, offer the greatest potential for success?
.
Identifying threats
- What obstacles do we face?
- Is changing technology threatening our position?
- Do we have debt or cash-flow problems?
- Could any of our weaknesses seriously threaten our business?
- What could disrupt our business? What strategic uncertainties keep us awake at night?
- What could a competitor do to hurt us?ddd
- How do we and can we prepare for uncertainty?
.
Understanding our competitors and standing out
- Who are our competitors?
- What are our competitors doing and offering?
- How do we stand apart from our competition? How is what we offer unique?
- How will we win against our key competitors?
- When do we choose to compete and when do we choose to collaborate?
.
Growing, learning, evolving
- What is limiting us? How can I transcend our limits?
- How can we grow?
- What skills should we develop? What can we learn?
- How can we invest in our competencies? What capabilities do we need to be successful in the future?
- What’s the best way to innovate?
.
Investing in our staff and partners
- What mentors and role models can inspire and teach us?
- Who can we collaborate and co-operate with in order to increase the value of our offering and share it more widely or deeply?
- How can we make use of partnerships? What can we do together that we cannot do alone?
- How can we invest in our relationships to make them more robust, healthy and fulfilling?
- How can we make our relationships win-win?
- What is our communication style? How can we make it more effective?
- How do we manage conflict? How can I be more effective?
- Who do we need to get buy in from to help our strategy succeed?
.
Managing risk
- What is our appetite for risk?
- Are we being overly cautious or overly impulsive or reckless?
- What are some intelligent risks we can take (where the potential upside far exceeds the potential downside?)
- How can we manage risks and threats? What contingency plans should we make?
.
Identifying initiatives in each key area of the business
- What are the key areas of the business that matter to us (e.g. finances, marketing, partnerships, staff training and development, R&D, logistics and processes etc.)
- How can we ensure the important areas of our business align with and support each another?
- What are key initiatives we can implement in each area of our business to increase our success?
.
Drawing up an action plan
- What should we do more of? What should we quit doing? What should we initiate?
- What are key initiatives we can implement in each key business area to maximise success?
- For each key initiative, what are the actions required?
- What actions will be rolled out, in which order and by when?
- What are the key milestones? What deadlines can we set?
- What are simple habits we can implement to enhance our success?
- What is the very next thing we can do to move our strategy forwards?
- Is our long-term view reflected in our short-term priorities?
- How do we effectively balance short and long-term priorities?
.
Creating streamlined processes and leveraging tools
- How can we make smarter decisions and more conscious choices?
- What processes (repeatable sets of actions) in our business can we improve and streamline?
- How can we use technology and tools to streamline our business?
- How can we work smarter? How can we achieve more with less?
- Do we have a system for managing daily tasks?
- Do we have a quarterly and annual review process?
.
Tracking and reviewing progress and adapting the strategy
- How can we track and review our progress?
- How often should we review progress on our strategic plan?
- When should we change or update our strategic plan?
- How do we make our strategic plan flexible to allow for changes?
