directedfocus

Does your business or even your community or sporting group, have a planning process that is in place and is active?

If something happened to you or a key member of your business would a competant alternative be able to pick up and know where things were headed?

Why these questions and why now?

Over the past 4 weeks I have been contacted by 11 businesses seeking assitance in raising debt and equity funds or seeking to exit or sell their business.

Only one had an active planning system in place.

I wasn't looking for a fancy bound document with lots of graphs and tables or a multitude of spreadsheets.

I was looking for a system that would indicate to me that there was a shared vision for what was happening inside the business and that it connected with the external communication that customers experience on the outside.

To add insult to injury those businesses were seeking $11+ million, no small ammount.

Sadly I was the bearer of bad news to a number of those people.

No plan .... no idea .... no money

Those who were seeking an exit were not likely to achieve their true potential at best and at worst it was going to be a zero sum game ... $0

Since then one has already closed the doors as they had no plan, no real accounting reports that gave meaning to what was being sold.

As one prospective buyer said to me "it's all 'smoke and mirrors' nearly as good as the dot com era".

Some of those seeking funding were most irate when I informed them that what they sought was not available because they had no plan. Regadless of whether they were seeking debt or equity they needed to demonstrate management, marketing, strategic and financial control skills and having an active planning process was the first place that a funder was going to look.

What's the alternative?

Every business regardless of size needs a "living" planning process, an activity that is happening on a regular basis that moves the business forward, changing and improving what's being delivered, the systems, internal and external processes and the way the business communicates.

This only needs to be a one page plan, nothing more complex than that.

If you need more plans such as a marketing plan, a PR plan, a social media plan then these too can be just one page.

The information impacting on those "one pages" can be more detailed, but when it comes to getting action ... one page is all it needs to be.

But is that enough?

In times of complexity there needs to be a focus on simplicity. Cutting through the multitude of micro planning possibilities and getting things to be as simple as just one page makes all the difference.

If all you need is just one page then planning doesn't become a chore ... it's an exercise of focusing on what matters and heading in the right direction