As Winston Said, 'Failing to Plan is Planning to Fail'

In my adult career prior to Business Coaching, I have only known the experience of having a plan and in a paradoxical twist understood fully that no plan survives contact with the enemy. In today's business context that certainly relates to the customer; 'no plan survives contact with the customer'.  That said without  plan you'll be running blind, reactive and unsure where you're going. With a plan and more importantly an 'end state' or 'intent' you achieve focused drive with knowledge of what you are doing and why. Planning focuses the mind and helps maintain discipline.

Here's my top tips on why planning forms a crucial element to getting started in business and remaining on course throughout.

1. The 'higher commander's intent'. When you first experienced that entrepreneurial drive to break away from a job and become your own boss; the business owner, you had a vision. That vision was the embryonic view of the future of your business. Knowing where you wanted to go the next question how you were going to get there, and communicating that journey to your team, bank manager or customers. Articulating the vision and forming the plan gives the focus and impetus to follow a course of action towards the success. The intent or the bosses intent is a written plan which tunes all parties into activities and action with a focus on achieving the intent.
2. By virtue of having a written plan you will have a series of milestones leading to the intent, to the vision. Essentially being able to chip away every day at the milestones will really highlight the progress step by step. A record of the journey and progress.
3. Focus on purpose. The actual process of writing and articulating your business plan will ensure you remain focused on the fundamentals, the lifeblood of the business. 

• The financial targets.
• Identify and focus on the target market with clear market research.
• Remain clear on the service or product for the customers. Details on the various aspects of customer engagement, managing their expectations.
• What is the marketing strategy, just how you are going to create the customer base.
• What the competition are doing.
4.  What if? A detailed business plan will enable strategies to be formulated taking into account various outcomes based on cause and effect. Having identified various potential outcomes will offer a series of solution and planning decisions to be made on the most probable course of action and have contingency in place. This increases the likelihood of achieving certain results and what actions need to be taken. 
5. The business plan forms the narrative for the cashflow forecast (finances in general), telling the story in numbers and supporting in words, it is afterall all about the numbers. A plan will also highlight the probability of success, show potentially when the return on investment will occur and what your targets are.  

Here's the important paradox in having any plan, they change. Having gone through the planning process will give you a great resilience and active response to the plan changing. Essentially you'll have a course of action in mind, likely to have worked through the potential of change and have contingency, being prepared. Arguably having the intent, the medium and long term vision in mind will allow you, the team and those who are invested in the business plan the dexterity to apply themselves in a manner to keep the end in sight.

Starting and running a business requires vision, a purpose and belief that you can succeed. Having a written plan with the vision in mind will increase the likelihood of success. See also my previous bloggs on why planning is so important.