Summary: A personal business plan or career plan is an easy way to clearly define to yourself where you are and where you want to go.
Create a business plan or at least know what your business plan is. Many law firms, large and small, don’t have a business plan for the firm. When a firm does have one, most lawyers and employees don’t know what it is. Why is having a plan so important? As Harrison Barnes so adequately puts it, “If you don’t plan your career, someone else will plan it for you.”
While you can’t create a plan for the entire firm, you can create a business plan or a career plan for yourself. Take a look at where you are right now and where you want to end up. Next develop a way to get to that end goal. Check back on your goal every so often to see if any adjustments are needed to set you back on the path towards your goal.
Having a plan can help you steer a course that is in line with your skills, abilities, and interests. When you have a set goal, you have direction and motivation to keep moving forward, even when things get rough. If your goals get clouded, a plan makes it simple to revisit what your original goals where to know if they are still your goals that you have strayed from or if your goals have adjusted toward a new direction.
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