Business Plans For Dummies®, 2nd Edition

Chapter 2. Charting the Proper Course

In This Chapter

• Creating your company's mission statement

• Introducing goals and objectives

• Looking at business efficiency versus effectiveness

• Checking out management by objectives and management by exception

• Setting your own goals and objectives

You probably have a pretty good idea of what you want to do with your business. But how do you make your idea a reality? You start by defining the business activities that your company plans to engage in, the goals that you expect to meet and the ways in which you are going to measure success.

In this chapter, we help you create a basic overview of your company and its activities, shaping the description into your company's mission statement. We introduce goals and objectives, and show you how to use them to measure the results that you expect to achieve. We also examine business efficiency versus effectiveness, as well as management by objectives, and we help you prepare to set your own company's goals and objectives.

Creating Your Company's Mission Statement

True, no one jumps up and down with excitement at the idea of a mission statement. Too many of us have seen mission statements turning yellow on the cafeteria notice-board, completely ignored by everyone but the people who wrote them. But it doesn't have to be that way.

Note

Your company's mission statement is meant to communicate the purpose of your business to people both inside and outside the organisation. It establishes who you are and what you do. ...