In continuation of the part 1
Planning does not need to provide you with all the answers but it can help you to identify key enterprise metrics you must pay attention to from time to time, and how to profitably and sustainably meet the market needs.
The real value you’ll receive from planning is sharpening your thinking and organizing your action steps.
It will make you prioritise what is needed to run your business. And with it, you can create a clear action plan with defined steps, timelines, and deliverables. This is where precise execution comes in.
Plans are useless until they are married to execution. Your plan is only as good as your ability to confront the market and sell your products or services to them, and keep selling!
Once you start operating, market conditions are such that you have to adjust. This does not mean you throw away your plan, i.e. your Business Plan, but you move quickly to adjust it to the prevailing realities.
Sometimes, the market will steer your business in unimaginable places that will violate everything you have planned.
Typically, new businesses fail because the people responsible for them take assumptions to be fact. They don’t work hard enough or systematically enough to identify and validate critical assumptions before either committing large resources to the business proposition or walking away.
Just as an American entrepreneur, MJ DeMarco said, ‘The world has the incorrigible power to corrupt business plans the moment the idea is transformed to reality. The best business plan in the world will always be a track record of execution. If you want investors, get out and execute!’
Business success is never about the idea but about the execution of the ideas. Come to think of it, people invest in tangible ideas or in people with track records of execution, and not on Business Plan. The value of an idea is hidden in its execution. Execution is always king!
You should have goals that are broken down quarterly or even monthly. Plan out where you expect to be every step of the way in terms of financing, staffing, marketing, and any other relevant department of your business.
In the true sense of the word, the owner of an idea is not he who imagines or plans it, but he who executes it.
He who thinks the idea owns nothing. He who executes the idea owns everything. So, after dreaming and planning it, the real deal is in executing it. If you have-not, it’s because you act-not. So, plan and work it!
End.
About the Author:
He maintains a personal blog where he shares proven business ideas and principles for SMEs.