Does your business have a strategic plan? What do you expect your business to look like in 5 years? 10 years? Next month? Having a vision will help you determine the course to achieving that vision. It is better to determine where you want to be and then determine the path to getting there, as opposed to determining you plan as you go along. Furthermore, without some kind of long term plan you are forced to make decisions with a very short window for execution and may make a good short term decision, but a bad long term decision. A simple way to evaluate your strategic plan is to review your existing business plan. If you don’t have a business plan write one now. It will serve as the basis for all future plans and will force you to look at your business in depth. Has your plan changed? Are you on pace to surpass your original expectations? Regardless of the answer, a change in your long term strategy may be warranted.

All too often the daily activities of running a business can cause you to lose sight of the bigger picture, the bigger strategy; not seeing the forest for the trees, if you will. Whether you are a business of one or have hundreds of employees oftentimes the operational side of things can overtake any type of strategic planning time. Whether you are sitting down by yourself, or with your management team, it is easy to get distracted by the operations side of the business. While these operational functions are a necessity they need to be kept where they belong—and that is not in strategic planning time. In the Harvard Business Review Michael Mankins has written a great piece on how to get your strategic planning focused on strategy and not distracted by operations. On a practical level you might find the following suggestions helpful:

1. Carve out time and place--Put it on your calendar and schedule nothing else. Work in a place free from interruptions from people walking in your door or calling your phone, or emailing your BlackBerry. Isolation is the operative word.

2. Have an agenda—What do you want the outcome of your planning session to be? Without an agenda you will waste valuable time deciding what you should decide.

3. Decisions--Expect decisions to come from the meeting, not items for further research. This meeting is for making decisions and every agenda item should have an actionable decision.

4. Assign responsibility—For each decision you make assign responsibility for implementation; who will do what by when. Maybe that somebody is you. Make a timeline, put it on your calendar and stick to it.

Your website is prime real estate. It is the online face of your company or organization. Much like combing your hair, picking out your clothes or putting on your makeup the selections you make show the outside world who you are and what you do. Thus it is with some deliberation that you should consider adding advertising to your website. Due to the ubiquity of online advertising and the ease with which it can be embedded on your site it has become quite common. With this ease of implementation the inclination is to add it to your site and make a few dollars as visitors stop by your site. However, I would suggest that you should do so carefully.

Adding advertising depends on the type of site you are running. Sites such as blogs or news sites are prime venues to display advertisements to your visitors. While they can detract from the message of the site most readers are accustomed to seeing them there and they are minimally intrusive. Fundamentally they do not interrupt the user’s interaction with the site or detract from the point that the site is trying to convey. Very few blogs or news sites carry no advertising and readers are used to it being there. Thus, it is part of the user’s learned behavior and does not detract from the interaction.

When advertising makes the user unsure what the purpose of the site is, it has then become intrusive and should not be on the site. A site should convey a smooth user experience; one that is easily navigated through and one where the user intuitively understands the purpose of the site (to sell your product, tell about your organization, etc). Advertising can detract from that as visitors are unsure if they are there to learn about your product or to view the sidebar ads. As well as being distracting ad banners can look fairly amateurish and detract from the overall attractiveness of your site.

So, a few rules as you consider whether or not to add advertising:

1. What is the purpose of your site? Does advertising add or detract from that message?

2. What is the effect on the visitor? Does advertising cloud your message?

3. Does the advertising detract from the visual appeal of your site?

4. Do the products advertised match the message of your site?

We all share our knowledge with our family, friends, and co-workers on a daily basis. Have you ever thought of a more formal knowledge sharing endeavor? Each of us is an expert in one field or another. At any given time there is someone who could benefit from that knowledge. Whether you run a store, take photos, write books, or make jewelry you have learned through your experiences and know of the keys to success, as well as the pitfalls along the way.

There are a few ways that you can share your knowledge, expand your network, and increase your client/customer base. As well as sharing your knowledge you establish credibility with current and potential customers, and can point them to your work as examples of your expertise.

1. Write about it—There are a number of venues that you can use to share your ideas in print or on the internet.

• Trade and professional publications
• Internet blogs
• Web publishing sites such as Associated Content
• Photo sites such as morguefile.com

2. Speak about it—Using your existing client list or network of business associates host a lunch/dinner/wine tasting and give a short talk about what you do and how your guests can benefit from it. If you have an associate who owns a restaurant, coffee shop, or art gallery (to name a few venues) hold a joint event to showcase your knowledge and their business. Often local community groups (Lions, Kiwanis, and Exchange Clubs, Chamber of Commerce) are looking for guest speakers. This is a great chance to get in front of a group and share your knowledge. Remember not to be too “salesy”; simply show your knowledge and the business will come.

3. Advertise it—Add it to your existing website, blog, or start a new website featuring your consulting services. Notify your existing clients and network of your new endeavor. Start to re-brand yourself as a consultant in your given field through promotional materials, business cards, and your web presence.

Does your email Inbox fill your heart with dread? Does the constant stream of emails keep you in a reactive mode all day preventing or slowing your progress? With the help of a few simple tweaks you can reduce your email stress and regain some lost productivity. 1. Pull email, don’t let it be pushed to you. In your Outlook setting go to Tools > Options> Mail Setup > Send/Receive and turn off the automatic send/receive. With this setting adjusted, schedule time in your day to read email, on your schedule, not reacting to every email that gets sent your way. 2. Set up filters. Most email clients (Outlook, Thunderbird, Eudora) and webmail systems (Gmail, Yahoo) have the capability to let you set up custom filters. A filter takes email and moves, deletes, or files your email so you either a) don’t have to deal with it, or b) deal with it on your terms. For example, if you know that a certain person sends things that are rarely relevant to you simple set up a filter to send their mail to a folder, bypassing your Golden Inbox. Then, at your convenience you can skim through their emails. You can set up such filters in Outlook by going to Tools > Rules and Alerts. 3. The Three Actions. For every email there are three possibilities: Delete, Make it a Task, Respond. If it is something that you do not want to respond to or requires no action then delete it. If it is something you must act on later drag the email to the Task bar at the bottom left of Outlook and drop it. It will create a Task listing. If the email requires a response right away then write the sender back. This works well if you use tip #1 as you will build your schedule to create time to handle emails. There are a great number of GTD (Getting Things Done) strategies out there that cover everything from managing email, to running your daily planner, to building your shopping list. You can read more at GTD blogs such as 43 Folders.