Welcome to INNsider Tips.

In today’s INNsider Tip, I’m going to give you 6 steps to establish a strategic mindset for your business planning and tasks. Spend only 10 minutes on each step. (it is a good idea to do the first two steps together).

Repeat the process once or twice a month and you will rapidly get beyond urgency and into a strategic way of thinking.

The 6 steps to a strategic mindset

Step 1: What Do I Want My Business to Become?

As I said, don’t spend a lot of time on these exercises, take 10 minutes or less and write down a 1- to 2-sentence answer to this question. Be specific, but not detailed; for example, you might want to become the hospitality property of choice in your region or describe your target market and why they should choose your property to stay.

Step 2: What is My Business?

In 10 minutes or less write down what your business is and does. Again, in a short paragraph, consider these topics when answering.

Who is your clientele?

What services or products will you provide?

Are you going to stay at your current location or are you going to expand?

What makes you distinctive from your competitors?

What are your values or philosophy, both business and personal?

What is your commitment to the use of new technology?

Step 3: Set a Goal

Give yourself a couple of minutes of quiet time, close your eyes and visualize your business as it will be in the future:

How did you get there?

What steps did you have to take to achieve that vision?

What kind of research and planning did it require?

Will you have to make any changes to reach your goal?

Step 4: Implement Your Goal

This might sound a little fast from going from a vision to action, but it’s important to prove your visions can succeed. Select one of your ideas, one of your goals and start to implement it.

You are now taking the first steps to action, planting the seeds in other minds, and setting the steps toward your goal.

Step 5: Gage and Evaluate Your Progress

What do you have to do to implement your goal?

It is important to stay on top of each step.

Gage and evaluate your progress.

You can measure your progress by communicating with others and reviewing any relative data, and it’s okay to go with your gut.

Don’t spend a lot of time evaluating each step, just a couple of minutes will do.

Step 6: Revisit

If you have taken only the allocated 10 minutes to do each of the five phases, then in less than an hour you have you’ve created a vision and mission, set a strategic goal that supports the statement, acted on it and measured your action.

That is it for today’s INNsider Tips. Make sure to subscribe so you don’t miss any future tips and make sure to join one of our groups that best serve your needs.

You can subscribe at

http://keystonehpd.com/6-steps-to-establish-a-strategic-mindset-innsider-tips-024