Most business consultancies strongly advice their clients to produce an outstanding business plan as a first step towards enterprise success. Idea Engineering Agency advices otherwise, it is a waste of time both for entrepreneurs and investors. Remember the saying from John Lennon’s song, ‘life is what happens when you are busy making plans’ don’t let the life of your business pass it by.
Reasons Against A Business Plan
A. A business plan creates tunnel vision, which impedes the entrepreneur to see all the possibilities that surrounds their idea. Say for instance that you plan to implement your business in a certain area, you set the plan in motion and you don’t observe the changes in demographic. Ones that are different from your original research, a plan will not allow you to adjust and move the business as needed.
B. A business plan forecast hypothetical figures, which could give you a wrong scope of the business. Say you are over optimistic with your turnover figures, this may cause you to hire too many staff, drive overheads, or implement a badly scaled marketing strategy. If you underestimate, you may not see the full potential of the business. Either way your are not in a good position.
C. A business plan does not allow for true innovation to occur as it overly focuses you on one path. What if you have to pivot your business in order to reach the desired market? What if you need to target another market? Or what if you needed to change your offering?
D. A business plan does not let an investor measure the strength or weakness of an idea. There was a case study about a leading phone manufacturer, who took new phone to market, which showed great figures. They thought that they had a winning formula, after the launch the product did not do well and everyone was confused, because according to the plan and figures it should have worked. How many times does this scenario occur? What they failed to see was that the idea was weak and no matter how great the numbers looked and how clean the plan was, it was still a failure to its investors.
Certainly we are not advocating chaos or blind execution, however there are more flexible methods, which allow for both flexibility and strategy.
Strategies
A. Create an implementation map, this will allow you to see all the things that you need to accomplish and how they fit in relation to each other. It helps you see your business from above and how all the components are progressing, so it is easy to see what needs changing, throwing away, or moved forward.
B. Create short implementation strategies that will allow you to move forward in a less overwhelming manner and leave time to see alternative routes. For example look at your company three months at a time, then re-observe the progress, make changes that need to be made and create another three months implementation strategy.
C. If the plan is for investors, give them a snapshot of your business, which includes a case study of a prototyped process. The prototype case study will give the investors a clear idea of the strength of your potential enterprise. You can also include empathetic scenarios of your market and communication strategy.
D. Instead of wasting time projecting potential figures, observe your market and map a communication strategy that will allow you to create business quickly. The prototype stage will also allow you to see if there is a market and how to reach it.