"Where do you want to be in five years?"

You likely heard this question long before launching your quest to be a small business owner. And though it may sound like a cliché, it's one you should try to answer. After all, business success is all about making progress towards a goal. But first, you must know where you're going and, perhaps more importantly, why.

Every entrepreneur should include mission and vision as part of their planning process. They help jump-start your thinking and provide guidance in making critical decisions, and supply motivation to plow through the details and minutiae that accompany every new enterprise.

Note that mission and vision are not merely things you codify into statements and post on the wall. They are, in fact, processes that help you make an objective assessment of proverbial "big picture" of your business and the environment in which it exists. With that understanding, you are better able to make decisions, shape policies and implement other practices that will help you capitalize on opportunity and cope with challenge. Find your Focus Building mission and vision into your business planning is not always easy. Brian Ward, C.H.R.P., a principal with Affinity Consulting and a specialist in the development of quality management systems, notes that, "achieving a balance between 'dreaming' about a desired future state and living in the current state is difficult. There is a constant tug-of-war going on between dealing with 'current reality' and developing a lofty vision of who we want to be, what we want to do and what we want to have."

Here are some tips for stretching your vision to include the day-to-day and the big picture, plus everything in between:

Give Your Business a Periodic Check-up
Take time out from the daily routine and force yourself to examine more long-term metrics, such as what's happened in your business over the past couple of years. A SWOT analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) will provide a clearer picture of what brought you to this point, and how conditions might evolve in the future.

Look Beyond the Boundaries of Your Business
Competitors and other forces beyond your control will influence much of what you decide and accomplish. As you examine the trends that influence all aspects of your business, learn how they came about and why.

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