Action-Based Tools and Tips to Make Your 2025 Planning Stress-Free

Spontaneity can lead to exciting events, like surprise road trips or impromptu karaoke nights. But in business, it can leave you scrambling when things go wrong. 

Planning is everything that’s the opposite of impulsive, on-the-fly decisions. It’s about giving careful thought to your year ahead. While many people shudder at the thought of writing a 2025 plan, it can deliver your future self a sack of presents; like a better work-life balance, the luxury of time to handle any setbacks, and an increased likelihood of hitting target (and the associated bonus)!

There are 3 broad steps for planning your 2025;

1. Assessing your situation

2. Turning insights into actions and

3. Executing your plan.

Here are our favourite tools and tips for each stage.

Assessing your situation

It’s impossible to know where to go If you don’t know where you are! Assessing your current situation is essentially laying the foundations of your plan. 

Tool: SWOT analysis

Everyone surely knows the SWOT analysis? Conducting a SWOT analysis is a great way to provide a snapshot of where your business stands. Here’s a quick breakdown:

• Strengths (S): What are your internal advantages and resources? Understanding your strengths helps you identify areas where you have a competitive edge.
• Weaknesses (W): Where could you improve? This may include a lack of skills or direction - anything internal that limits your performance.
• Opportunities (O): What external factors can you leverage for growth? These could be emerging trends, market gaps, or evolving customer needs.
• Threats (T): What external risks could harm your business? This might include competition, changing regulations, or economic downturns.

The simplicity of SWOT analysis has made it a go-to tool for over 60 years. Because it is simple, it takes the complexity out of planning and helps you think critically about your situation without feeling overwhelmed. 

Tip: Be careful with categorisation 

Many people confuse the internal and external elements. Strengths and weaknesses are always internal - they relate to your company and resources. On the other hand, opportunities and threats are external - they refer to factors outside of your business, like market shifts or competitors. For example, a brand new product you’re launching is an internal strength, not an opportunity. Make sure you’re categorising each element correctly to get the most out of your SWOT analysis.

Tool: Stop, start, continue

Ah, the good old "Stop, Start, Continue" framework! Here’s the general idea:

• Stop: Identify activities that drain resources or didn’t contribute to your goals.
• Start: Incorporate actions that address current gaps or new opportunities.
• Continue: Keep doing what works - double down on successful strategies.

It’s a great place to start because it’s dead simple, doesn’t take long and gives you clear insights on what to action next year. 

Turning insights into actions

Now you have a good idea of where your business is at, it’s time to take those insights and turn them into actions. 

Tool: TOWs matrix

The TOWs matrix is all about putting your SWOT analysis into action. A TOWS matrix blends internal factors (strengths and weaknesses) with external ones (opportunities and threats) to generate actionable strategies. Its primary goal is to minimize risks, seize opportunities, leverage strengths, and address weaknesses effectively.

Here’s how you can map out actionable strategies using TOWS:

Tip: Align with company strategy

If you’re passionate about working with academia but your company has shifted its focus to the biotech marketplace, it's time to roll up your sleeves and dive in. Aligning with the company’s strategic direction is essential - not just because it's expected, but because failing to do so could leave you without the necessary resources. Products, marketing materials, and other support will be tailored to the new target market, and if you’re not in sync, you might find yourself without the tools you need to succeed.

Tool: Zone of Influence

We bet you had great plans at the start of 2020, right? Then… the global pandemic came along. Things can and will go wrong. 

When it comes to contingency planning, focus on what you can actually control:

• Outside your zone of influence: Some setbacks are totally out of your control: a meteorite strike, an alien invasion, or a rogue herd of elephants storming your office. These events are uncontrollable so, worrying about them is a waste of time. There’s nothing you can do to change them.
• Inside your zone of influence: You should focus on things that are likely, realistic and controllable. For example, what happens if your competition starts focusing on your territory? This is a realistic threat, but it’s something you can plan for. 

Remember, it’s your responsibility to meet your targets. And that means anticipating what could go wrong and having a plan in place to mitigate those risks. Don’t wait for surprises - prepare for them!

Tip: Always expect delays

While we’re here: timelines are never what you expect! Maybe your customer is in the middle of building a new lab, or your company is about to launch a new product yet delays are almost inevitable. Plan for these by building some cushion into your timelines and keeping an open line of communication with stakeholders to stay ahead of potential issues.

Tip: Perfect is the enemy of good enough

Perfection is a time thief. We can get so caught up in perfecting things that we end up wasting an incredible amount of time – stealing hours better spent on execution. Of course plans need to be good, actionable and realistic but if you spent too much time on perfection, you could find yourself halfway through the year without a concrete strategy. That’s valuable time lost! Keep in mind, it’s not the Sistine Chapel ceiling - it's a roadmap to get you moving forward, not a work of art.

Executing the plan

This may sound obvious but many of us spend months doing the plan and then it just sits on someone’s desk. With a solid plan in hand, the real challenge is putting it into motion.

Tool: Accountability partners

We’re huge fans of accountability partners - a colleague who can help you plan, keep you motivated, and hold you to your goals. Having someone who regularly checks in on your progress can make all the difference. Research shows that if you schedule regular accountability sessions with a committed partner, your chances of sticking to your goals increase by up to 95%.

Tip: Make the plan yours!

It’s important your plan is just that – YOURS. Making some minor adjustments to an online template or having one handed to you from above means you’re probably less invested. So, make sure you spend time thinking on, writing and communicating your plan. 

Tool: PDCA

There’s a business planning concept called the Deming Cycle that, if used, places your plan in a continuous feedback loop, so you can identify and change parts of the process that need improvement. It goes like this

1. Plan: Devise your plan (hopefully you’ve done this…)

2. Do: Implement the plan (Good job getting this far!)

🡪 Most people get here but there’s more…

3. Check: Assess whether the plan is still working. Is this giving me the desired results?

4. Act: If parts of your plan aren’t working, ACT on it (cycle back to step 1).

They say that ‘what gets measured gets managed, and what gets managed gets done’. Keep checking to ensure that your plans are having the desired impact and if not, change what you are doing! 

Tip: Mind the gap

There’s many different types of gap in business but here we’re talking about how far you are from your target. While many of us do this at the end of Q3, this doesn’t give us much time do anything about it! If you track your gap from week 1 – there’s no surprises. The earlier we can spot a gap, the more time we have to plug it.

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