A Business without a Business Plan achieves everyting in it
A Business without a Business Plan achieves everyting in it
A truer word has n’er been spoken, yet does that mean that a business with a “Plan” will by default be successful?
All cows eat grass. This animal eats grass…
ergo it must be a cow!
No, obviously not. Most business plans don’t have much of an impact on the success of the business because nobody in the business feels the “Plan” has anything to do with “what gets them out of bed in the morning”. It is just one of those things that you “ought” to have, all the books say so!
You probably have a “Plan”. It might be based on a “Business Plan Template” you found. You filled in the blanks and fiddled with it a bit. It makes the bank happy. It looks great, it feels good in your hands, and when you finished it, you felt that warm and fuzzy feeling we often mistake for business achievement in the absence of more solid evidence. But when was the last time you even looked at the thing?
First things first
Let’s start at the beginning: Why is it again that we even need a “Business Plan”?
The purpose of creating and having a business plan is twofold:
To spell out exactly where the business is headed and how it will get there.
To have a fixed set of criteria to “test” every decision in the business against.
If your Business Plan meets both of those criteria, wholly, you can be sure it won’t be kept in the bottom of a drawer. It will sit on top of your desk; it will be dog-eared, and smudged; it will have coffee stains, scribbles and doodles all over it. You will look at it every day and so will everyone else who has anything to do with it.
Business Plans that live
So how do you create a “Plan” that will be so alive?
There are 6 key criteria that a Business Plan must meet for it to truly add to the success of the business:
It must be a “live” document and be kept “live” by the people directly affected by it, today.
It must have been created by the people directly affected by it, at the time of its creation.
It must be created in ways and in terms that are meaningful to the people who have created it and who maintain it.
It must be based on the “Guiding Principles” of the business.
The “Guiding Principles” in turn must flow from the “Mission” or “Purpose” of the business.
Finally the “Purpose” of the business must be a clear expression of the “Values” and “Aims” of the people who ARE the business.
As you can see, this means that before you even start to think about putting a “Business Plan” together, you need to focus inwardly, individually or as a team. You need to get very clear about what “gets you out of bed in the morning”, what the purpose of being in business is at all and how you decide what to occupy yourself with in this business.
Personal Values
A good way to start this process is to do an exercise to determine what your top personal values are. There are a lot of tools available to help you with that process. One of them, a personal values checklist is available on this site on the downloads page. Once you are really clear about your personal values, the values that you want your life to be about, right now, it is time to think about the “Purpose” of your business, and how that purpose or mission connects with your personal values.
Research all over the world clearly shows that a business “Purpose”, “Mission” or “Vision” that is solidly grounded on your own personal values is an absolute indicator of the success of your business. So: WHAT are you in Business for? What is THAT all about? It may be about money, but often it is about so much more than money: What will you get from having a successful business? What will that give you? How will you know that your business is successful, and what difference will that make to you? Or your family? Or your customers?
Guiding Principles
Then it is time for step 3. This is where the actual creation of a purposeful and impactful Business Plan starts. The “Guiding Principles” of your business are the principles that every decision and every action in the business is guided by. It will be the litmus test for everything you do.
If a decision you, or someone else in your business, wants to make conflicts with the “Guiding Principles” there are only two options:
Don’t make the decision
Amend the Guiding Principles
There is no alternative. Putting a set of Guiding principles in place will be one of the most powerful things you will ever do for your business, and once you have them in place they will form page 1 of your Business Plan.
Here are some random samples of “Guiding Principles” I helped clients design in the last year:
Our behaviours are: Open, Trusting, Professional and Safe
All our processes add value
We leave the environment better than we found it
We deliver more than expected
We deliver when we say we do.
Shareholder value is increased every year
All our employees will have a stake in the business
There is life outside the business for our people
We own our competitive advantages
We are a positive force in the communities we are a part of.
In future articles I will write about the next steps in the process to create Business Plans that make a difference.
Further reading:
“It is not the Big that eat the Small, it is the Fast that eat the Slow” by Jason Jennings and Laurence Haughton
“The E-Myth revisited” and “E-Myth mastery” by Michael Gerber
“The one-minute-manager series” By Ken Blanchard et al.
“First Break all the rules “ by Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman
“The Fish series” by Stephen C Lundin et al
“Maverick, the success story behind the worlds most unusual workplace” By Ricardo Semmler
A Business without a Business Plan achieves everyting in it - To learn more about this author, visit Roland Hanekroot's Website.
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We all know the mantra: If you want to have a successful business, you need to have a Business Plan.
A truer word has n’er been spoken, yet does that mean that a business with a “Plan” will by default be successful?
All cows eat grass. This animal eats grass…
ergo it must be a cow!
No, obviously not. Most business plans don’t have much of an impact on the success of the business because nobody in the business feels the “Plan” has anything to do with “what gets them out of bed in the morning”. It is just one of those things that you “ought” to have, all the books say so!
You probably have a “Plan”. It might be based on a “Business Plan Template” you found. You filled in the blanks and fiddled with it a bit. It makes the bank happy. It looks great, it feels good in your hands, and when you finished it, you felt that warm and fuzzy feeling we often mistake for business achievement in the absence of more solid evidence. But when was the last time you even looked at the thing?
First things first
Let’s start at the beginning: Why is it again that we even need a “Business Plan”?
The purpose of creating and having a business plan is twofold:
To spell out exactly where the business is headed and how it will get there.
To have a fixed set of criteria to “test” every decision in the business against.
If your Business Plan meets both of those criteria, wholly, you can be sure it won’t be kept in the bottom of a drawer. It will sit on top of your desk; it will be dog-eared, and smudged; it will have coffee stains, scribbles and doodles all over it. You will look at it every day and so will everyone else who has anything to do with it.
Business Plans that live
So how do you create a “Plan” that will be so alive?
There are 6 key criteria that a Business Plan must meet for it to truly add to the success of the business:
It must be a “live” document and be kept “live” by the people directly affected by it, today.
It must have been created by the people directly affected by it, at the time of its creation.
It must be created in ways and in terms that are meaningful to the people who have created it and who maintain it.
It must be based on the “Guiding Principles” of the business.
The “Guiding Principles” in turn must flow from the “Mission” or “Purpose” of the business.
Finally the “Purpose” of the business must be a clear expression of the “Values” and “Aims” of the people who ARE the business.
As you can see, this means that before you even start to think about putting a “Business Plan” together, you need to focus inwardly, individually or as a team. You need to get very clear about what “gets you out of bed in the morning”, what the purpose of being in business is at all and how you decide what to occupy yourself with in this business.
Personal Values
A good way to start this process is to do an exercise to determine what your top personal values are. There are a lot of tools available to help you with that process. One of them, a personal values checklist is available on this site on the downloads page. Once you are really clear about your personal values, the values that you want your life to be about, right now, it is time to think about the “Purpose” of your business, and how that purpose or mission connects with your personal values.
Research all over the world clearly shows that a business “Purpose”, “Mission” or “Vision” that is solidly grounded on your own personal values is an absolute indicator of the success of your business. So: WHAT are you in Business for? What is THAT all about? It may be about money, but often it is about so much more than money: What will you get from having a successful business? What will that give you? How will you know that your business is successful, and what difference will that make to you? Or your family? Or your customers?
Guiding Principles
Then it is time for step 3. This is where the actual creation of a purposeful and impactful Business Plan starts. The “Guiding Principles” of your business are the principles that every decision and every action in the business is guided by. It will be the litmus test for everything you do.
If a decision you, or someone else in your business, wants to make conflicts with the “Guiding Principles” there are only two options:
Don’t make the decision
Amend the Guiding Principles
There is no alternative. Putting a set of Guiding principles in place will be one of the most powerful things you will ever do for your business, and once you have them in place they will form page 1 of your Business Plan.
Here are some random samples of “Guiding Principles” I helped clients design in the last year:
Our behaviours are: Open, Trusting, Professional and Safe
All our processes add value
We leave the environment better than we found it
We deliver more than expected
We deliver when we say we do.
Shareholder value is increased every year
All our employees will have a stake in the business
There is life outside the business for our people
We own our competitive advantages
We are a positive force in the communities we are a part of.
In future articles I will write about the next steps in the process to create Business Plans that make a difference.
Further reading:
“It is not the Big that eat the Small, it is the Fast that eat the Slow” by Jason Jennings and Laurence Haughton
“The E-Myth revisited” and “E-Myth mastery” by Michael Gerber
“The one-minute-manager series” By Ken Blanchard et al.
“First Break all the rules “ by Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman
“The Fish series” by Stephen C Lundin et al
“Maverick, the success story behind the worlds most unusual workplace” By Ricardo Semmler
A Business without a Business Plan achieves everyting in it - To learn more about this author, visit Roland Hanekroot's Website.
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Leanne Hoagland-SmithAre your sales where you want them to be? Will you be one of the few who achieves sales or business success or one of the many who have failed to change? Are you tired of being told you are like everyone else? Then you may find my first book on sales of interest. Be the Red Jacket in the Sea of Gray Suits, The Keys to Unlocking Sales available at Amazon or at http://www.processspecialist.com/red-jacket.htm. This book is a reflection of my no-nonsense approach to improving sales to overall business results. If you are truly committed to making sustainable changes, then I can help you secure a positive return on your investment because I focus on executable solutions not telling you the problems you already know you have. From training to corporate (group) coaching to executive one on one coaching, my approach is to assess, create awareness, build a goal driven action plan and then execute. The bottom line question is "Not do you or your employees know it, but do you or they want to do it?" Please call for a free strategy session at 219.759.5601. - Visit Leanne Hoagland-Smith's Website |
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David AchesonDavid Acheson is the founder of DCJA Consultancy. DCJA Consultancy is a management consultancy business specialising in B2B sales consultancy. They offer bespoke and packaged sales consultancy including Sales Optimisation Review, Interim Sales Management, Sales & Marketing Review, 1:1 Sales & Management Staff Analysis, Management Training, Solution Sales Training, Creation of New Pay Plan, KPI's, run Customer Feedback Campaigns, assist with Recruitment, Coaching, Appraisals and set up Strategic Marketing Campaigns. David spent his early career in accountancy and then moved into sales in 1982, working in Office Equipment, IT, Advertising, Training, Outsourcing and Consultancy. He has held many Senior Positions in SMBs and Global Organisations including Head of Sales Operations & Head of Business Development. His knowledge, skills and great experience of the Sales Industry has led to David making keynote speeches and running educational sessions to key businesses through organisations including The Chamber of Commerce and Business Link. - Visit David Acheson's Website |
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David BarrDavid Barr is the President of Venture Opportunities, Inc. David has been a professional business broker/intermediary since 1980 focusing on General Business Brokerage and Mergers and Acquisitions representing client transaction value from $400,000 to $20,000,000. Mr. Barr has handled the sale of over four hundred and fifty companies. David earned a university degree from the State University of New York majoring in economics and business. David holds the Mergers and Acquisition Master Intermediary and the Certified Business Intermediary designations from the International Business Brokers Association. He is also a Senior Business Analyst and a Texas licensed Real Estate Agent. For more information about David and Venture Opportunities, visit www.bizdealmaker.com. - Visit David Barr's Website |
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Anne BarrAnne Barr has over 26 years experience in sales and marketing, six years as a franchisee. She has assisted over 367 business owners and purchasers to achieve their goals in career change, transition and exit strategy. She holds the designation of Certified Franchise Executive from the International Franchise Association, Certified Business Intermediary from the International Business Brokers Association and Board Certified Broker from the Texas Association of Business Brokers. Anne is active in professional organizations, networking groups and volunteers for non-profit entities. As owner/operator of four successful businesses, Anne has proven people skills and enjoys helping clients find the right "fit" in business ownership. Visit www.FranchiseOpportunitySpecialist.com for more information about me and my company. - Visit Anne Barr's Website |
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Kim CastleWith nearly two decades in the advertising and design business, with clients like Domino's Pizza, General Motors, Direct TV, Pedigree, Wolfgang Puck, Higher Octave Music, Hollywood Celebrity Products, Disney, and Paramount, as well as thousands of entrepreneurs around the world define, structure, communicate, and position their business for greater profits, BrandU(R) co-creators Kim Castle and W. Vito Montone discovered that entrepreneurs could experience the same power that big brands command for a fraction of the cost with the world's only process-based results-drive Integral approach to business creation. BrandU(R) is helping entrepreneurs grow with the power of extreme clarity from idea...to brand...to market(TM) and helping one million entrepreneurs become successful and whole so that they can make a difference in the world. Are you one of them? If you want to experience clarity all the way to the bank(TM), get started now at http://www.brandu.com. - Visit Kim Castle's Website |
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Jeff FosterWebBizIdeas.com is a Minneapolis website design company founded to help people start an internet business by providing them with website, business, and internet resources that help foster the growth of successful online businesses and develop innovative Internet business ideas. We specialize in internet consulting & internet marketing. - Visit Jeff Foster's Website |
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Cheryl MatthynssensCheryl is a life skills coach, licensed Chemical Dependency Counselor and a 20 year entrepreneur. Cheryl's dedication to achieving a life of balance led to her expanding her teaching from the simple managing of life's daily challenges to adding financial well being as well. A direct marketer with DrinkACT, she is gaining ground in the online community with her concepts of making sure business owners, entreprenuers and employees have well rounded life styles. She opened up a small affiliate site - The Balance Guide- to help others find resources for mental and emotional well being. Visit Cheryl's blog to see more of the diversity beyond business she has began offering online at www.thebalanceguide.blogspot.com - Visit Cheryl Matthynssens's Website |
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