A business plan is a necessity for any business. It is the result of painstaking thought and analysis, translated into a strategy and action.
Many advisers will tell you, quite rightly, that simply having a plan is not the path to success. They will tell you that to execute your strategy you will need to be continually planning, and taking operational or tactical decisions as you are sure your objective. I’d like to suggest a different way of looking at this.
Everybody in business will tell you that they often encounter barriers, unexpected obstacles and difficulties on the path to their ultimate goal. Having a means to navigate through this environment of uncertainty becomes critical.
Navigation, as commonly understood (or misunderstood), requires us to know where we want to go. Often in business however we are more like explorers who have no idea what we will find along the way, or even what it looks like when we get there. We are driven by a vision of the future, and often one we want to create. The most important question on such a journey is often “where are we?”
It’s the navigator’s job to answer that question.
Do you know where you are? Have you defined your purpose adequately, so that at any point on the journey you can determine if you are fit for purpose? Do you have the necessary information to assess the health of your business? Do you have the cash flow to keep going? Have you been filling in the details as you go so that you can test the continued validity of your business plan? Or are you pursuing the journey in the hope that the ship is in shape? Do you know where you are, or are you just assuming that you are where you want to be?
Think of your business journey as a journey of discovery. As a navigator does, you not only chart the course, that you continually scan the horizon and monitor the weather, and make adjustments to sail around the storms or to avoid the rocks and reefs, or to take advantage of favourable winds. Just as the navigator calls for course changes to avoid hazards, and then for re-corrections to come back on track, so too you can manage your businesses.
How good is your information, your understanding, your analysis of experience, and your scanning of the business horizon? Where are you getting your advice? Who do you turn to for assistance to navigate through the morass?
At any point in the journey that is your business life you must be able to answer the question “where are we?” and then assess whether you are still on track or off course. And then you can make the informed decisions necessary to keep the business viable. Execution is strategy. Navigation enables execution.
And all business is a journey, not a destination.