"If you don’t know where you are going, how will you know when you get there, or even if you are going in the right direction?” This motto from a motivational poster seems a little twee, but is very true. Clearly understanding what we are trying to achieve and what success looks like is vitally important if we are to lead our pharmacy business to grow and be more successful.

It is common to find that small businesses or business units move from one year to the next without any coherent plan. Often the only plan is to keep doing what we have been doing, and maybe doing some more of it. With this attitude, we find businesses, at best, grow incrementally or stay the same and often lose ground to competitors.

Business planning is an important leadership activity. It helps leaders identify how they can make step changes in business performance. It gives clarity about direction and the steps needed to get there. There are three key steps to effective business planning:

• Understanding where we are now
• Understanding where we want to get to
• Understanding how to get from here to there.

Many businesses follow a standard April to March financial year, and the beginning of the calendar year is the ideal time to start our business planning process, so that the pharmacy team can start working towards the business plan from the first day of the business year.

Where are we now?

Even if we know where we want to get to, it is difficult to plan our journey if we don’t have a clear idea of where we now are. This also allows us to sense check our plans to ensure they are realistic and achievable in the timescales we give ourselves. We can look at this in two ways: our current performance and our current situation.