You know that old adage “Failing to plan is planning to fail”? Benjamin Franklin said that by the way. Well, I found that in most cases this is true. The fact is we get busy and if we haven’t made a plan for our childcare or at least written down our goals we tend to forget them.
In fairness, if you run a childcare you are a very busy person. So forgetting things especially if they are ideals or goals is very understandable.
But it doesn’t have to be. We can take some time at the end of the year (like right now) and look forward to what we want to accomplish for the coming year.
Let’s Make a Plan for Your Childcare Next Year
As a visual person. I found that if I can visualize or write things down I’m more likely to accomplish them. A couple of years ago I wrote this post. It took the premise of creating a vision board made it more visual, if that makes sense. It also made the process quite a bit easier.
Writing that post and the results I had made me a big fan of creating a plan for accomplishing my annual goals. So today I thought I would share with you my strategy for planning a productive new year.
What are your goals for the New Year?
You have to know where you want to go before you can figure out how to get there.
If you say my goal is to make my child care better, or grow my business that’s a great goal. But what does it really mean?
Are you looking to expand your business? Or enlarge your enrollment? Maybe you have a goal to purchase new equipment and new supplies for your childcare. Plan for Your Childcare
Setting specific, achievable goals is key to being successful!
Maybe you want to invest in yourself and your business at the same time by taking workshops or courses. Maybe you’re just in the process of getting ready to open your child care. In that case, you probably have quite a few goals for the new year. Maybe you have plans to do all of this. In which case you definitely need a plan.
Well here’s the good news, we can get it done! But first, we need a plan. Plan for Your Childcare
Let’s make a plan!
Whatever goals you have decided you are going to work on in the new year, let’s make a plan for accomplishing them.
How To Make SMART Goals.
- First, choose 3 to 5 short-term goals. These goals you will schedule or plan to accomplish in the next 30-90 days. In the next step, we will attach deadline dates for each of these.
- Next, choose 10 to 12 goals you will accomplish throughout the coming year. 10 to 12 goals may seem like a lot but we are planning for a full year goal completion. And in actuality, those goals might wind up being subtasks under one main goal.
For instance, if you are planning to open your child care, you might have that as the main goal but there need to be several subtasks to reach that one overarching goal.
Let’s say your goal is to expand your enrollment. That might be your main goal but there are several steps to reaching that goal. You may need to get new business cards made, create marketing materials, update ads, create new ads, etc. Those are all subtasks to the main goal.
Related Reading:
Here’s another example; let’s say your goal is to upgrade or update your equipment or supplies. That would be your main goal. Subtasks to that goal could be setting a monthly budget for purchases, setting up a checklist for needs and wants, purging old equipment, and supplies, fundraising etc.
If you set a plan or even just set the main goal you have a better chance of accomplishing it. Especially if you put a specific plan in place.
Get Set!
Set Deadlines
Short-term Goals
Let’s start with short-term goals. First, prioritize your list. What needs to be done first? Once you have your list of priorities then schedule these for completion in the next 30 to 90 days. For best results, attach a specific day on the calendar for completing each one of these tasks. Even better, set up reminders 5 to 7 days in advance of the deadline.
Long-term Goals
Accomplish these goals Monday through Friday and actually have a weekend!
OK now onto the long-term goals. Again, I find it best to attach a specific goal to a month on my calendar. Since we got the short-term goals knocked out in the beginning of the year, the months in the rest of the year should have about four weeks to accomplish the overarching goal of that month.
Take the monthly goal and break it down into weekly tasks Monday being when to start the task and Friday is the deadline to complete that week’s goal. That’s right we can accomplish these goals Monday through Friday and actually have a weekend!
TIP: If you happen to miss a deadline, be sure to set a new deadline for that goal.
Moving toward your goals might mean a change along the way.
Be flexible!
It’s important to note that as the year progresses your goals might change. Like for instance, your enrollment might get a boost at some point and you might not need to continue to work on finding new clients. That’s great!
Accomplishing a goal and checking it off of our list means we can move forward in the year with positive momentum. It also allows us to be flexible and add new goals as they arise.
Rave & Review
Instead of a rave review, I think at the end of the year is a time to rave about your accomplishments and review what needs to be your strategy moving forward. So with that said, let’s make a plan to meet back here at the end of next year. We’ll look back at the year and see what goals we accomplished and where we need to progress into the following year. Plan for Your Childcare
By the way, I have a special tool that I will be using in the new year. It’s The Providers Planner & Organizer, a planner just for childcare. The planner is full of calendars, checklists, forms, and logs to help you keep on track with your goals and accomplishing them in the new year. Click here to find out more about it. ORDER NOW and plan for a GREAT NEW YEAR!
