Everyone knows the value of good planning. Leaders especially appreciate the need for proper plans to reach goals.

Tonight we say goodbye to a year through which we will never walk again. We cannot re-live it. We cannot change it. All we can do is examine it and make plans to create a difference for the future.

Plans are not New Year’s resolutions.

Plans are not goals.

Plans involve the activities necessary to keep our resolutions and reach our goals.

How vital is it we have plans? There is an old adage, used by several, that says; “those who fail to plan, plan to fail.”

We all need short and long-term goals. The is true personally and at the corporate level. However, how we plan to reach our goals makes a difference.

Before we commit to our New Year’s resolutions; before we set up goals for the year ahead; let us sit down and establish the details of a proper plan to ensure success for 2011.