Alice asked, “Cheshire-Puss…would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?”
“That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,” said the Cat.
Last week we started looking at Saturn’s transit through the sign of Virgo, where it’s been since September 2007 and will leave in October 2009, returning for a few months during 2010. To best take advantage of this energy, we’re going to begin looking at business planning, aided, of course, by astrology’s ability to forecast coming trends.
We spoke last week about Saturn in Virgo’s love of classifying data into information to make it useful for decision-making. Every business owner knows the importance of accounting and controlling, even if for no other purpose than preparing your taxes!
Upsides to Planning
I advise my clients to prepare detailed business plans each year. I have found the most beneficial aspect of this is the planning process itself. The combination of letting your imagination soar and then putting your ideas to the test on a spreadsheet is an invaluable learning tool.
Most management consultants say that a drawback of business plans is that people tend to leave the plan on the shelf until next year when it’s time to make a new plan. I disagree. I know many people who go through the process – the process itself clarifies their priorities – then put the plan on a shelf, never look at it, and then when the next planning cycle comes and they take down last year’s plan, they find they have accomplished every goal. The process clarifies their intentions, and their intentions bring about the results.
I advise business planning because in the process you quantify your assumptions and test their validity. There is nothing like cash flow projection worksheets to show you whether you’re in the realm of the reasonable or not. Business planning is a time to test, analyze, and assimilate new ideas – activities Saturn in Virgo loves. In the words of Dwight D. Eisenhower, who had Saturn in Virgo, “In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.”
Downsides to Planning
But I want to warn you before we begin about some of the downsides of Saturn in Virgo and how to avoid them. For some people, the Virgo energy is tedious and time-consuming, and when added to Saturn, downright irritating. Saturn can manifest emotionally as fear, worry, and a tendency to perceive a half-empty glass. In Virgo, this can become worry over inconsequentials and becoming lost in data and details.
The test with Saturn in Virgo is whether you have the discrimination to assess what is important and what is not. And this discrimination comes with the business planning process itself.
I know some business owners who don’t plan at all because they can’t keep their hope alive if they start to miss their metrics. Or they feel they cannot control the outcomes, so why plan at all? Or they sense the humorlessness that can be part of the process, the over-seriousness that can become so rigid there is no room for spontaneity and taking advantage of opportunities. Other people make a business plan, but it is too vague, too unrealistic, or too future oriented.
What to do?
How do you walk the line between specific enough but not overwhelmed by details? How can you let your optimism soar to the skies yet keep your feet on the earth as you plan the implementation? By following a short step-by-step process that allows for creativity and practicality.
Over the next two weeks I’ll lay out a process for you, guided by astrology. You can follow it day by day, as I will, and share how it’s going in the comments section below. Or you can pick a couple of days between now and the end of October, clear as much of daily operations off of your desk as you can, sit down, have some dream time, and write your business plan for 2010. Your business will thank you, your wallet will thank you, and you will thank yourself.
