We may call this business decision making 3.0 – A map to enable you join the 5% established businesses and leave other 78% that remain small and micro businesses forever.

Since my first business- when I was in standard Six (so called during 8-4-4 system)- when I bought my first two chickens , both hens, I realized this was driven by intrinsic desire to have my money.

Having seen how my mum used to sell eggs from her few hens, I decided I must also join the league of having my money. Maybe not deciding – but subconscious influence

I wanted to become a force to reckon– just wishful thinking.

Looking back, this desire continues to drastically influence my life.

At the age of 13 years I managed to buy my first cow – 6 months old calf. This was after 2 years of very successful stint with poultry.

The whole of my secondary school life, which was a day school, I never lacked enough cash including supplementing my school fees from poultry farming.

By age 18 years, I had become obsessed with doing small business for money.

Then joined college, then university.

From age 22, I started enjoying monthly salary from Accounting career.

5 years into professional career and salaried employment, my mind had developed urge for big business considering I had witnessed big businesses from corporates I worked for.

Soon after I had to voluntary leave formal employment to start business. Internal pressure from my imaginations could not allow I sustain loyalty.

I knew it was time to leave for entrepreneurship.

Many theories emphasize that when you want to start a business, ensure you have a business plan.

They emphasize that running a business is about business plan

In this letter I want to synthesize every thing I have learned into a comprehensive roadmap that can help you navigate from the famous business planning to business road map.

Business roadmap is very different from business plan.

I plan to write this today using clear and natural language while simplifying the concept as best as I can.

Thank you for committing to flow with it.

I will leave you to internalize in your personalized way and critically think out of it

The interconnectedness of your mind, body and past foundations continue to play a lot of roles in any decision you make today.

It is very rare for any human to have self-profess that they are truly self – developed without aligning with other foundational forces – whether you recognize them or not.

Today let’s introduce business decision making 3.0

Model To Maximize Decision Making

Human interconnectivity can be described in following 4 forms;

Mind- Personal mental world. Your thoughts, emotions, beliefs and internal world. How you interpolate the world

Spirit- Collective mental world. Your relationship to your environment, community, culture, family, friends, colleagues and reality. Meaning and connection

Body- Personal physical world. Your behavior and appearances. How you feel the world interpolates you. Habits and actions

Vocation- Collective physical world. Your relationship to set system, structures and social institutions. Education, career, economy. How you contribute to society.

 This alignment is meant to illustrate you with bigger picture. Not to develop any action point, but just guideline to help you start understanding yourself in relation to how you respect frames or not.

If not, how much framed lifestyle continue influencing you without your knowledge and therefore pushes you many times outside your control horizons.

Once you understand this model, you can begin to understand beyond plans and reach into reality of road maps.

What is a business Roadmap?

A business roadmap is master plan that directs your big picture into actionable small steps.

Having goals, desires broken down and organized into projects and timelines that would then help you track progress realistically.

What is the difference between a road map and plan.

Many enterprise owners ask this question many times.

A roadmap defines the journey you will take to reach goals. Regardless how promising they are, without trace of activities, they are just wishes.

Imagine planning a wedding.

Before setting the day, you create a road map to show the spots you will accomplish and all mid milestones that need to be accomplished before D-Day.

Similarly, business road map helps you effectively plan your path to success. Adopting exact activities, you need perform, how you will be measuring progress and indicators you will be using.

This is totally different from business plan or wishes that only gives you essential information and strategies for running the business.

For most micro entrepreneurs, they only have such plan packed in powerful wishes house. It gives them convenience of making decisions randomly.

No accountability in tracking implementation and results.

 What are different types of business roadmaps ?

Roadmaps is about defining frameworks for making decisions.

A Strategic roadmap – Decision on long-term goal. Focuses on the big picture and overall direction you want your business to move in.

 A Project roadmap – Dictates the steps, tasks, and timeline for completing specific activity. Key milestones and deliverables.

A product roadmap – Building specific product or service the company want to deal with. Outlines features and improvements

A Marketing roadmap – Customer acquisition initiatives and targets . May include defining your route to customer – social media, building referral system, promotions.

In my coaching of small and micro enterprises for growth, I have seen these roadmaps working very well.

Mainly it is about creating framework that define how your decision-making flows.

How do you create a roadmap?

Repeating again, creating road map is about moving from deceitful convenience of making decisions randomly to aligning a thought process towards predictable results

These safes your energy.

Yield cumulative value.

 It is slow but sure.

This is how to create –

1. Identify problem and define the solution

2. Define short and long-term desires or business goals

3. Break the goals down into manageable steps

4. Outline specific tasks and milestones to monitor

5. Set realistic timelines when expected to accomplish activities

6. Understand what is needed to undertake the activities including any constraints

7. Take a deep visualization of that road map

8. Create short term activity plan -weekly, fortnight, monthly, quarterly

9. Set review timelines and keep adjusting accordingly

In my coaching for micro business, the phase of creating weekly planner seems very automatic.

However, this has revealed that many business makers operate freelance convenience and therefore more than 50% of their time and energy don’t go to business they so wish to grow.

It is scattered all over activities that don’t matter – weddings, burials, groups. Then you wonder, what really matters.

As an owner of small and micro business – road map helps get clear glance of what matters, what is priority and what need your attention.

At end of year, you will definitely be way past those who seem genius of doing lots and lots of activities because they are never harmonized.

When you start by creating sketch road map, your brain will filter and dump ideas towards predictable things like;

· Things you need finish this month

· Project you are currently working on and their timelines

· Long term goals within the year

· Future areas to keep in mind and keep following

· Success to celebrate

Once you create roadmap to guide decision making- you will have blue print to realise your small business dreams

Good you remember, each small baby steps, will lead to magical and greater things if you stay on course.

I hope this was not long unnecessarily.

That’s enough for now.

If you have enjoyed this, keep checking our other more free guides for growing your small and micro business.

 -Gachoka-

Ps

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I am Charles Gachoka - CPA-K , MBA- C.O.O & Business Development at www.cygnus.co.ke . I am also the lead in Business Finance Operations consultancy portfolio. Cygnus prides working with over 50 owners and decision makers of mid-level businesses, helping bring out huge growth through Kaizen in Operation Excellence, Business Finance Operations, ESG & Strategy Deployment model (Hoshin Kanri).

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