People Priorities and Business Goals

It blows my mind when I see templates for business plans or growth plans.

They’re full of marketing strategies, customer segmentation, product launches and all the nuts and bolts of running a business.

But if people feature at all, it’s usually just: “grow from 5 people to 12 by the end of 2026”.

That’s it.

This goes back to the age-old thinking that people are just another part of your resources, something that makes your business run.

And I just can’t get my head around the false divide between “commercial focus” and “people focus.”

For some reason, having people-focused goals is treated as a nice-to-have, something you worry about once everything else is done if you even have the luxury of time to give it a seconds thought.

I want to flip that. In my profession we’re even called Human Resources. I want to change this. I want to change this to Human Relations, because people are not resources.

People are human beings. They work, create, dream, design, talk, laugh, cry, learn, imagine.

Your business succeeds or fails not because of a fantastic marketing plan, or how brilliant your product is, or how cleverly you’ve segmented your customer groups.

Your business succeeds or fails because of the people in it.

So why are people always at the back of the line? Why are they considered “add-ons” after all the commercial strategy is sorted? It’s utter nonsense.

Here’s my call to action for you: when you plan your business for the year, your goals, your strategies, your growth plans - link everything to your people.

Think about training, development, conversations, support, role clarity, recruitment. What does that actually look like in your business?

Because when you get the people stuff right, the business stuff happens.

It doesn’t work the other way around.