What? Me do a Business Plan? But I’m Not a Start-up!

Are you a business owner? Do you have a business plan? Is your answer to that question: “Business plan? but I’m not a start-up. Why would I want a business plan?” business management

My answer is that you do want business planning. You want business planning as a way to set strategic focus, priorities, effective tactics, measurement, and task assignments. Make those clear and record them so you can revisit monthly. Then track progress and performance as you do a monthly review. Add in plan vs. actual accounting to compare projected sales and spending and use that process to kep a close eye on cash flow. Anticipate problems. Accommodate rapid change. Give yourself a process to optimize your management.

Maybe you don’t want a traditional business plan

The disconnect is the problem of what is a business plan. I agree that you don’t want a business plan if you think of that as a formal traditional business plan document. The traditional static document, that you do once and then forget, is not useful to real businesses.

The shame, though, is what gets lost in the shuffle. The real business planning process is such a great tool for growing a business, but so many people dismiss it as a one-time plan used only to start a company or raise financing. That myth of the business plan for start-ups only gets in the way far too often. If you own or run a company, you probably want to grow it.  And if you want to grow a company, then you want to plan that growth. And the planning is only the beginning; you want to use the full planning process to manage growth.

The real benefits of business planning

Think for just a minute about how many different reasons there are for an existing company to plan (and manage) it’s growth. There’s the need first of all to control your company’s destiny, to set long-term vision and objectives and calculate steps to take to achieve vision. Without planning the company is reacting to events, following reality as it emerges. With planning, there’s the chance to pro actively lead the company towards its future.

For an existing company that wants to grow, planning process is essential. Everybody wants to control their own destiny.  The planning process is the best way to review and refresh the market and marketing, to prioritize and channel growth into the optimal areas, to allocate resources, to set priorities and manage tasks. Bring a team of managers together and develop strategy that the team can implement. Work on dealing with reality, the possible instead of just the desirable, and make strategic choices. Then follow up with regular plan review that becomes, in the end, management.

This normally starts with a plan.  The plan, however, is just the beginning.  It takes the full cycle to make a plan into a planning process.

Comments

  • Usmaan Ali says:

    A very well written and elaborated post. A Business plan is essential before starting any business, a business plan helps us identifying – What, Where, When & How to start the Business. You have shaded light on key concepts of Business plan & its benefits which is very great. Thank you for sharing your knowledge on this topic .

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *