What Is so Great about Developing a Business Plan for a Business?

I couldn’t resist.

The question was, “What’s so great about developing a business plan for a business?”

Here’s my answer:

What’s great about a business plan starts with something similar to how we feel about having a collection of flight, hotel, and rental car reservations before we take a trip.

The business plan, done right, breaks the uncertainty into manageable pieces.

• It sets the most important elements of strategy, including business offering, target market, and differentiators.
• It sets the most important tactics for execution, and matches them to strategic focus.
• It sets up and defines the important steps for the future.
• It defines the key assumptions and resulting projections for sales, direct costs, operating expenses, and cash flow.

It’s a great tool for moving forward, figuring out what’s important, managing the important flow of tasks responsibilities, and money, and then—on a regular basis—checking results with review and revision.

It’s not the plan that really matters; it’s the planning. But you can’t have planning without a plan.

And here’s where that question and answer took place, on Quora: What is so great about developing a business plan for a business?