Poor planners never have enough time and run from fire to fire. They’re days are filled with crisis. People without a plan are controlled by their environment. Their team sees them as having no direction. 6 reasons planning is a pain:
- Consumes time.
- Hard to concentrate on the goal.
- Feels like you aren’t getting anywhere.
- Things are still happening around you. It feels like I’m falling behind.
- By the time you get the plan done, it needs to be changed.
- We already know what to do. Why plan? Just go do it.
How planning saved my company: I founded and led SafeData, a data backup and recovery company. Our customer’s sales ranged from $10 million to $2 billion. We received a letter, in early 2009, informing us our rent was going to triple in 4 months. This increase would make us uncompetitive and put us out of business. We needed a plan for survival. I called the team together because planning is a team effort. Here’s what happened. Initially the team was confused because the team didn’t realize the severity of the problem. Here’s what I did:
- Stated the problem. We need to find a new datacenter.
- Established a deadline. We have four months.
- Determine the steps to make the move.
- Assigned responsibilities.
- Formed a team to minimize customer pain.
- Set a schedule of weekly meetings to review and modify the plan as needed.
- Executed the plan.
Three and a half months later, we moved into our new data center with a minimum of customer pain. 6 reasons successful entrepreneurs plan… Because it:
- Points the way.
- Changes as situations change.
- Makes organizations efficient.
- Defines goals.
- Keeps you on task.
- Establishes finish lines.
5 Benefits of planning:
- Customer satisfaction.
- Team involvement guarantees success.
- Shared responsibilities.
- Something to revise and improve.
- Plans save time.
Planning enabled us to take charge. More on planning: Golf, Sailing, & Good Business Plans Can you share a time when planning was crucial to your business? What did you learn about planning?
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Larry,
Your outline above couldn’t be more true. I often find myself wanting to do a plan and put it on hold because so many other things seem to need attention first. Sometimes the time consumption drives me crazy! However I did do a market plan which I spent about 1 week on. At the end of my planning I realized very quickly I needed to get out of the market I was currently in and wait until new policies were in place for the market to bear fruit again. Unfortunately my plan fell on deaf ears and we experienced MAJOR financial problems. So the big lesson for me was even though I knew what to do I still had to convince partners which didn’t work. So in the future If I see this again I will make sure I have a defined exit strategy from the company.