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Planning Is Futile In A Chaotic World – Every once in a while, we hear how deluded we are to believe that the world can be shaped by our hopes and
actions. This philosophical objection to planning is perhaps my favourite. It takes ammunition from a serious debate about the fundamental nature of
the universe and uses it to defend what almost always is either uncertainty about how to plan effectively or simple pessimism. This is different from
the idea that planning doesn’t work as these business owners have never even tried to form a coherent plan, but have just decided to do the best they
can and hope that they get lucky as they are knocked hither and thither like a steel ball in the pinball machine of life.As with all of the most
dangerous excuses, there is a kernel of Mulberry Shopper Bags truth in each of these ideas and I sympathise with those who have allowed themselves to be seduced into either abandoning or
failing to adopt the habit of business planning. Most small business owners feel the same dread in relation to business planning as they do to visits
to the dentist, so it’s unsurprising that so many simply don’t bother. However, by turning their backs completely on planning, they are in danger of
throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Taking each idea outlined above in turn, I’ll attempt to show why business planning is critical, not just
despite that reason but precisely because of that reason.I’m Too Busy Not To Plan – Time is the scarcest resource we have and it is natural mulberry outlets that we would want to spend it doing those things that we believe will have the greatest impact. Of course, we want to spend most
of our time producing, but we should also invest at least some time into developing our productive capacity. As Stephen Covey pointed out in his
seminal work, "The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People", we should never be too busy sawing to sharpen a blunted saw.Planning is one of the
highest leverage activities we can engage in, as when done effectively it enhances the productive capacity of small businesses, enabling them to do
more with less. Nothing could be a bigger waste of precious time than to find out too late that we have been using blunt tools in pursuit of our
business goals.If we as small business owners weren’t so busy and time wasn’t so scarce, then we wouldn’t have to make choices about what we did with
our time and resources. We could simply pursue every opportunity which presented itself. However, for the busy entrepreneur, the decision to do one
thing always has the opportunity cost of not being able to do something else. How can we be certain that our business is going where we want it to go
without pausing regularly, scanning the horizon and making sure not only that we are on track but also making sure that we still want to get to where
we are heading? I believe more time is wasted in the single-minded pursuit of opportunities that are not right than is wasted by over thinking the
opportunity of a lifetime.In short, small business owners are extremely busy and their time is precious. So much so that to waste it doing the wrong
things with the wrong tools would be tragic. Small business owners that cannot afford the luxury of making expensive mistakes simply must regularly
sharpen the saw through continuous business planning.Traditional Planning Doesn’t Work, So We Need a New Planning Approach That Does – There are some
fairly large question marks over the effectiveness of traditional business planning techniques. In an age where business models are becoming obsolete
in months rather than years, a business plan projecting five years into the future cannot be viewed as gospel. Nobody has a crystal ball and if they
did, they probably wouldn’t be writing business plans but using their remarkable predictive powers to some more profitable end.Dwight D Eisenhower
said "plans are useless, but planning is essential". Whilst producing a document called a business plan is far from useless, the real value lies in
the process by which the plan is created in the first place. If this process can be kept alive in a business then the dangers associated with
traditional planning can be minimised or avoided all together. In an environment of continuous business planning, small businesses can be flexible and
adaptive to the inevitable changes and challenges they will face. Rather than quickly becoming obsolete, their plan will simply evolve with the
changing circumstances.Accepting that the plan is a living thing that will evolve necessitates a change of approach to business planning. An effective
business plan is the response to the repeated asking of the questions what, why, how, who and how much.
It is not a 20 - 30 page form to fill in for the benefit of a bank manager or some venture capitalist, who will probably never fully read it. A
business plan should help you, not hinder you, in doing business. If traditional business planning doesn’t work for you, it’s time to embrace the new
paradigm of continuous business planning.My Business Could Do Even Better With Effective Planning – If you are one of the lucky few whose business has
thrived despite an absence of traditional business planning, then I say a sincere well done. I hope that you can say the same thing in five years
time.Business life expectancy in Britain and across Europe and indeed the world are in rapid decline. A study done at the end of the eighties and then
again as we marched into the new Millennium showed that life expectancy had more than halved for British businesses in those ten years, from an
average of 9.7 years to 4.1 years. Just because a company once enjoyed market leadership does not mean that its future is assured. Many high street
institutions have fallen victim to the recent recession. Five years ago it was inconceivable that UK retail institutions like Clinton Cards, Game,
Borders, Barratts, T J Hughes, Habitat, Focus DIY, Oddbins, Ethel Austin, Principles, Allied Carpets, Woolworths, MFI and Zavvi/Virgin Megastore would
all be either out of business or teetering on the brink of oblivion in 2012. Yet that is exactly what has transpired.Any business from the smallest to
the greatest is not impervious to the winds of change. A new competitor, a technological breakthrough, new laws or simply changes in fashion and
consumer preference can all re-write the future of a company regardless of how bright that future once seemed. It is precisely because these risks
exist that business planning is critical. To survive in business is extremely hard, but failing to effectively plan for the future or adapt to current
realities surely makes it impossible and failure inevitable.Of course, it is not necessarily the absence of plans that did for these companies but the
quality of their plans and most especially the quality of their implementation. Even a poor plan vigorously executed is preferable to the finest
planning and research left to rot in a drawer. Continuous business planning is effective business planning because it emphasizes implementation and
regular reviews of real results as part of what should be a continual process of improving company performance rather than simply attempting to
predict the future and wringing our hands when our prophecy fails to come true. We believe, like Peter Drucker, that the best way to predict the
future is to create it.Planning Is Essential In A Chaotic World – We sometimes feel small and insignificant as we try against all odds to translate
our dreams into business reality. It’s easy to feel all at sea when we consider some of the challenges we face. However, whilst it is true that we
cannot control the direction of the wind, we can adjust our sails and change the direction of the rudder. Difficult and challenging circumstances may
come in our lives, but we can control the outcome of these circumstances by choosing which path to take.The truth is that we are fundamentally
achievement orientated as human beings. When this is taken away, we lose much of the energy and motivation that propels us forward. There have been
numerous studies carried out on life expectancy rates after retirement , which show that when clearly defined goals and daily action moving in the
direction of those goals are removed from our lives, the Mulberry Taylor Bags result is literally fatal. The individuals studied who failed to replace their career goals with a new focus for their
retirement simply shriveled up and died. The implications for small business owners are clear. Those business owners with clear goals who take action
daily that propels them in the direction of their goals are far more likely to thrive and survive than those who take any old goal that comes along or
move from day to day with no defined objective other than survival.It seems to me that precisely because life is so chaotic and challenging that
effective planning is essential. Without continuous business planning, our businesses and the small business owners that work in them may find that
bit by bit they are atrophying and on their way to becoming another business failure statistic.There undoubtedly exists an antipathy for business
planning felt by many small business owners. Clearly, this cannot be fully explained by the lack of a "planning gene", but it equally cannot be fully
justified by the reasons most commonly put forward by small business owners to not engage in the business planning process. These reasons must be
critically re-evaluated and a commitment made to a continual and never ending process of improving the condition of their small businesses. Without
such a commitment, the future for small businesses in the UK is uncertain.
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