Effective business planning is more than just talking with your management team about what you plan to do next year. And it’s more than paying someone to write a book about your grand plans too, even if it gets someone to write you a big check.
In fact, effective business planning has nothing to do with raising money.
Did I lose you? Stay with me for a moment and you’ll see where I’m going.
The truth is, effective planning is about building a successful company by managing change rather than being a victim of it. That’s pretty much it. The main reason entrepreneurs and growth-minded CEOs are asked to write elaborate business plan documents for savvy investors is that the investors want to know that you actually do plan how you will run your company with their money.
Of course, they would like to get excited about the product, and they like to see that you went to a lot of trouble to impress them with pretty pictures, charts and shiny paper. But none of that is worth half what you paid to print it unless you can demonstrate you actually will use the plan, or something fairly close to it, to run the business.
In other words, content and intent first, spit and polish second.
My close colleague, Gene Siciliano (our “CFO for rent” at www.cfoforrent.com) is an excellent strategist, consultant and speaker. His website is filled with resources and articles, and you can sign up for his newsletter. I wanted to share his succinct message with you.
