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    How can I balance short-term needs with long-term targets?

    As a business leader, you’ll be familiar with the tricky balancing act that comes with the appeal of solving short-term needs at the potential detriment to long-term goals. While short-term wins may seem appealing, how do they affect your overall strategy? And how do you navigate turning down short-term opportunities in order to focus on long-term plans? These are the big decisions that every business needs to make.

    Ways to help you deal with it:

    Action plan

    Develop your goal setting and planning routine

    Effort : Low
    Impact : High
    Working on your routine adds rigour to the planning process and makes sure your team can work effectively. Get started with our five-step plan.

    ACTION PLANS are a structured list of steps designed to help you approach tackling a particular business challenge.

    • We explain why each step is important
    • Customise by setting your own completion dates and assign tasks
    • Helpful tools are provided for certain steps
    • A downloadable PDF version of each action plan is available

    Action plan

    Embed your vision and values in your culture

    Effort : High
    Impact : High
    Once you’ve set your company values, how do you embed them within the culture and keep them front and centre of your business?

    Action plan

    Understanding where you add the most value as a leader

    Effort : High
    Impact : High
    Our five-point action plan will help you identify where you add value, so that you can be more effective in your role.

    Action plan

    Improving your accountability as a leader

    Effort : High
    Impact : High
    Implementing a system to hold yourself accountable ensures you’re making progress, rather than simply flitting between tasks.

    Action plan

    Assessing your own strengths and weaknesses

    Effort : Medium
    Impact : High
    Knowing your strengths and weaknesses creates an opportunity for you – and your business – to grow. Our five-point plan will get you started.

    Action plan

    Creating a roadmap to evolve as a leader

    Effort : Medium
    Impact : High
    Being proactive about the steps you need to take to develop as a leader means you can support your company’s growth. Follow our five-step plan to create a roadmap for your development.

    Action plan

    Applying external learnings to your business

    Effort : Medium
    Impact : Medium
    It’s vital to scrutinise the advice you receive and decide what’s suitable before you apply external learnings to your business.

    Action plan

    Learning to recognise warning signs in your business

    Effort : Medium
    Impact : High
    Learning to recognise warning signs in your business is crucial to stopping issues from developing into bigger problems.

    Guide

    An introduction to balancing short-term business needs with long-term targets

    Businesses face constant pressure to respond to urgent operational and financial needs. The risk is that the company might lose sight of long-term goals.

    GUIDES break a challenge down, providing important context and real-world experiences.

    • Based on SME experiences, not corporate jargon
    • Filled with real-world stories
    • Achievable steps every business can take

    Other support that's available

    Balancing short- and long-term goals

    Balancing short- and long-term goals

    Striking the balance between your short- and long-term business plans can be a tricky one, but identifying and prioritising needs is a good place to start – as Diamond Consultants explains.

    Building a roadmap

    Building a roadmap

    These handy templates from Roadmunk make building your business roadmap fun and fast.

    How other businesses have tackled something similar

    Heidi Thompson, Duncan & Toplis

    Real business story

    Striking a balance between short and long-term business needs

    Balancing short and long-term business needs is a common challenge for leaders. We spoke to a HR manager about how she makes it work..
    Luke Lang, Crowdcube

    Real business story

    Outside perspectives helped us seize opportunities for improvement

    Getting outside perspectives and focusing on learning has opened the eyes of leaders at Crowdcube and LG Davis to the untapped potential of the companies..
    Gemma Screen, Extract Coffee

    Real business story

    How to work with staff to create and codify company values

    Find out how defining and codifying the company's unique culture helped retain staff and drive business forward at Extract Coffee..

    The questions lots of businesses are trying to answer

    What issue is keeping you awake at night? A bit of targeted support is often all you need to overcome those challenges.

    Select a topic

    Digital

    How can I improve the digital presence my business has? How should I go about collecting data to improve my business? How should I use the data I have to improve decision making? How can I streamline and automate some of our business processes? How do I work out the best digital sales channels to use? How do I assess and choose the right technology to improve business operations? How do I effectively seek external digital support? How can I understand what digital tools or support my business needs? How do I know if my technology is robust enough for growth? How should I best budget and plan for new technology investments?

    Leadership & Strategy

    How do I learn to become a better leader? How do I improve the communication in my business? How do I get staff interested in our vision and values? How can I reflect on my own strengths and weaknesses as a leader? How do I give my team autonomy and get better at delegating? As a leader, how do I learn to trust others within my organisation? How do I apply learnings from other businesses to my own company? How should my role as a business leader evolve with the company’s growth? How can I balance short-term needs with long-term targets? How do I get better at noticing and reacting to warning signs?

    People & Team

    How can I improve my hiring and onboarding practices? How can I develop the skillsets of my workforce? How can I develop career paths for my staff? How can I run a better appraisals process? How should I performance manage my staff? How do I deal with a challenging member of staff? How can I increase staff engagement and motivation? How can I keep my best members of staff? How do I manage an effective remote workforce? How can I reduce employee turnover?

    Planning

    How do I better inform my business plans? How do I know when to scale up my business? How can I define and communicate my vision for success? How do I ensure my business can navigate a dip in trading? How do I know when to invest in my business? How can I get better at looking internally at my business? How can I get staff interested in the financial situation? How can I make my business more resilient to change? How can I balance ambition with setting realistic goals? How can I work out what required skillsets are missing in the business?

    Sales & Growth

    How can we develop new products and services? How do I develop a clear unique selling point? How can we better serve our most loyal customers? How do I financially plan for new opportunities? How do I build a network to support my business? How can I get a better return on investment from my marketing? How can I identify new customers to target? How do I create targets and KPIs for my staff? How do I make sure my team and processes are ready for growth? How do I benchmark my business against competitors?
    All