As we embrace a new year, it gives us a great opportunity to reflect on our achievements of 2014 and think about goals for the year ahead.

As described by Professor Mark Taylor, Dean of the Warwick Business School in the UK, an effective goal or vision needs to be out of reach but not out of sight. That is, something your organisation can visualise as a possibility to achieve, yet somenthing you are not able to reach out and take hold of right away.

Out of reach but not out of sight is also a fitting description for an element of vision Jim Collins and Jerry Porras coined BHAG – a Big, Hairy, Audacious, Goal. In their book Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies, Collins and Porras commented that “a true BHAG is clear and compelling, serves as a unifying focal point of effort, and acts as a clear catalyst for team spirit. It has a clear finish line, so the organisation can know when it has achieved the goal; people like to shoot for finish lines.”

How then do you create a specific and measurable BHAG?

A good place to start is to think about how you will improve yourself and your business through professional development and the creation of strategic action plans. To kick off the year FBA are finalising the development of a new workshop – Family Business Essentials – piloting on February 3 in Melbourne, and we invite family businesses to take part.

The Family Business Essentials workshop provides you and members of your family business with the opportunity to spend half a day focusing on where your business is at, what areas need attention, and what you need to do from here.

Specifically, the workshop will help you to:

• Understand the key elements of a successful family business
• Identify how those key elements apply to your family business
• Identify areas of your family business that require focus and prioritise them
• Develop an action plan to take back to your business to refine and implement

This workshop would be most appropriate for family businesses that do not have the wisdom of previous generations to draw upon and consequently have many more questions than answers.

For those of you who have attended the Family Business Advantage and Family Business Awareness courses, you will see some similarities; however Family Business Essentials is designed as a workshop from which you will take away a written action plan, and a workbook which you can use to further develop your plans back in your business.

FBA invites you to be part of the development process and register for the pilot at the discounted rate of $95 per person (cost recovery price).

Register here.

For further information, contact Anne-Marie McNally, National Courses and Forums Manager at amcnally@fambiz.org.au or on (03) 9867 5322