Want a Successful Business? Throw Away Your Business Plan!

My eyes became misty as I listened to the speech. The speaker was a successful business owner who had finished telling a powerful story. The story was about how he started his business from almost nothing and grew it into a successful distribution company with over $6 million in sales. He was persuasive and eloquent as he made his final point.

The point was that to be successful in business, you must have a business plan.

This was not news to me. Every business book I read, every consultant I spoke to, every business owner I knew repeated the same mantra: you must have a business plan, you must have a business plan, you must have a business plan.

My personal experience with Business Plans was quite different, though. I had gone through three copies of them, two of them for the same business. One of them was over sixty pages long and took my team and me thirteen months to complete. Yet business success, so
far, had eluded me.

The Secret

Later on, I asked the speaker what he meant by a Business Plan. As he started to explain, he and I both started to realize that it was not the written copy of the business plan that he was trying to get across as a secret to his success. It was something else, something far subtler, something I had suspected myself but was not quite sure about it yet.

Over the years, through trial and error in my own business and in working with other businesses, I have figured out the truth. The truth is not so earth shattering. It is quite simple. So simple in fact, that if I told you, you would say you already knew it.

Here it is: The secret to business success is not in a written copy of a business plan.

That’s it.

The secret is not in the Business Plan. It’s in the process of writing the Business Plan. It’s not in a stack of beautifully bound paper with exciting pictures, graphs and charts. It is in the hearts and minds of the people who wrote it. It’s not in the eloquently laid out arguments, written to convince the reader of the viability of the business. It’s in the expression of our deepest essence, of our hearts and our souls and our minds.

Actually, the important thing is not what people do to the Business Plan. It’s what the Business Plan does to the people who wrote it.

Ultimately, the real business plan is written not on a stack of paper but on the psyche of the people behind the business.

Such a Business Plan is as dynamic as the people who are behind the business. It evolves with the people in the business. It can pass on from person to person. Ultimately, it can outlive those who originally “wrote” it.

Such a Business Plan is enduring, dynamic and potent.

A successful process of writing a business plan transforms people from mediocre performers to engaged, passionate agents of change.

The Process

What does this process look like? Well, it’s a different subject altogether. But let me point out three “tests” that will tell you if you are on the right track.

Periodically in the process of writing your Business Plan, ask yourself and your team these three questions:

1. Are we moving towards confusion or clarity?

2. Are we becoming more focused or are you becoming more scattered?

3. Are we becoming more confident about the success of your business or less confident?

You see, as you write your Business Plan, there will be moments of confusion. There will be times when you will feel scattered. And there definitely will be times when you will feel discouraged about the success of your business.

When that happens, remember this: It’s all a part of the Process - the Process of writing your Business Plan.

Yet, if you allow enough time in the Process, you will find yourself moving from confusion to clarity, from being scattered to being focused and from nagging self-doubts to resounding confidence.

And that, by the way, is the secret Process of Business Plan writing that the speaker at the beginning of this article was trying to convey. The Process is not always pretty, it’s not always straight-forward and it’s not always easy.

But as far as business success is concerned, the Process is infinitely more important than the end product, a written copy of the Business Plan - no how matter how breathtakingly beautiful it might be.

This is Bhavesh Naik, wishing you a Happy Success.