Business Planning
Why most Small Business Plans don’t work
We see lots of Business Plans in our work with small business. Every once in a while we may see one that stands a chance of working, but not very often. Most are little more than a frustrating, disheartening waste of time, energy, hope, money and resources — the wrong thing, done for the wrong reasons. And they become a constant, silent reproach to the business owner, because they just sit there, gathering dust, unable to be properly implemented.
It’s not that they won’t work. They CAN’T work!
It’s not just the fact that they’re dull, boring and useless, either. They’re downright dangerous, for four very important reasons:
1. They undermine your faith in the planning process, which is indispensable to small business survivial and prosperity.
2. They undermine your confidence in yourself.
3. When you try to make them work, you end up doing things for the wrong reasons.(Whether they’re the right things or the wrong things to do doesn’t really matter. If you do them for the wrong reasons, you can’t succeed. It’s that simple.)
4. They’re based on BIG business models and methods, which often have little or no relevance to small business.
If you haven’t yet read the following pages, I recommend that you do so now, before proceeding. They’ll help you make a lot more sense of the information in this section. Return here by clicking “Start here” in the Contents frame.
- Why we do what we do (especially the comments on the Secret of Small Business Success)
- Small Business versus BIG Business
The first reason why most small business Business Plans can’t and don’t work is that they’re the wrong things to do, done for the wrong reasons. Here’s a short, short list of WRONG reasons for preparing a Business Plan. There are plenty of others just like them. (You’ll find the right reason on the next page… “Why do you need a Business Plan at all?”)
- Your accountant recommends that you should have one.
- Your banker insists on you supplying one with a loan application.
- You read or heard somewhere about how important they are.
- Your competitor has one.
- That short course on Small Business Management helped you do one.
Almost every small business Business Plan we see is based on BIG business planning models and methods. There are all kinds of reasons why they won’t work in small business, but the most important reason is that they create the wrong perspectives which, in turn, create the wrong attitudes and behaviour for small business success.
There’s a widespread assumption amongst small business people that BIG business knows what it’s doing. In part, that’s true. But only when it comes to doing BIG business – not small business. But even then, it ends up doing the wrong things for the wrong reasons – and creating widespread suspicion and resentment of its motives and methods.
You can’t afford those kinds of negative perceptions.
