For Great Ventures™: Your Basic Plans to Start

“In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.”
– Dwight D. Eisenhower

In all things, planning serves a purpose.  The purpose in NOT to develop perfect plans!  It is to channel and challenge your advance worrying.  It is to work through your thoughts and ideas on what is possible.  It is to feed our positive belief about the future.  It is to help us see our path for handling the worst case scenarios.  It is for building our confidence.  It is for focusing our sub-conscious mind.  It is for creating opportunity when none seems present.

“The general who wins the battle makes many calculations in his temple before the battle is fought. The general who loses makes but few calculations beforehand.”
– Sun Tzu

There is a crucial balance to be achieved in planning your ventures.  You must go at it with the intention to create great plans but with the expectation that your plans will never be perfect.  You must plan thoroughly enough to cover the breadth and depth of the issues and challenges to not be caught off guard but still expect to be surprised.  You must plan so that you can take action sooner rather than later but be willing to regularly step back from action to review and plan.

“He who fails to plan, plans to fail.”
– Unknown

Planning serves ultimate success and reduces your chances of experiencing ultimate failure.  Planning does not eliminate the little and regular failures along the path to ultimate success.  In fact, it is has been said that the only way to accelerate success is to accelerate the rate of failure.  So, don’t expect to eliminate failure with your critical planning efforts.  It won’t eliminate all the risk but it will give you confidence to handle and minimize the risk along the way.

I love what Jeff Olson said about planning in his book, The Slight Edge:

“You have to start with a plan, but the plan you start with will not be the plan that gets you there…And that the reason you need a plan: if you have no plan, there will be no jumping off.  In fact, if you put too much energy into the plan, and make it too perfect, you’re more likely to squelch all the life, spontaneity, intuition, and joy out of the doing of it.”

You must put energy into your planning and your plans should direct your energy to start but don’t rely on your plans to create the results you are after.  There is a dance that occurs on your journey.  It is filled with life, spontaneity, intuition and joy.  It is also framed by your plans.  The energy of that dance is what produces the decisions, adjustments, and right actions to make a great venture possible!

“A good plan violently executed now is better than a perfect plan next week.”
– General George S. Patton

There are several critical plans that make a great venture possible.  You should focus some time and attention to developing these plans to start you on your journey.

1. The Business Plan

• Business Plan Pro Software – I have used this software several times with clients (and my own ventures) to develop a sound business plan to start.  You can get this software for $100 to $200 and it will allow you to create a great plan to start in just a few hours time.
• The Business Plan Presentation – With your business plan complete, you then need to develop a short PowerPoint presentation to present to key people (investors, banks, employees, strategic partners,etc…) around your venture.  Don’t let the plan speak for itself, develop an appealing 10 to 12 slide presentation that engages and energizes your target audience.

2. Your Business Vision, Values, and Purpose

• This is the general strategic direction for your venture.  Some of this will come together over time but you can 80% accurate with a few hours of commitment upfront.  It will be invaluable in improving the quality of decisions you make along your journey.

3. The Financial Plan

• Elements of a financial plan will be a part of your basic business plan.   However, you should spend some time developing more detailed financial plans to help guide you forward.  These financial plans might include different financial strategies and more detailed Budget and Cash Flow Projections.

4. A Strategic Meeting Rhythm Plan

• You strategic meeting rhythm plan is critical in getting you and your team to dynamically move between action and planning.  I first heard of this concept from Verne Harnish and he compares the rhythm necessary to that of a great jazz band.  At work, many people have a bias toward either action or planning and thus spend too much time in their preferred realm.  A great venture has a meeting rhythm to create the right balance between action, learning, planning, and improved action.

“When defeat comes, accept it as a signal that your plans are not sound, rebuild those plans, and set sail once more toward your coveted goal.”
– Napoleon Hill

Take time to get your critical plans to start in place.  Without them, a great venture is just NOT possible!

© Copyright 2010 Jon L. Iveson, Ph.D.