Tear up the business plan
Your business plan (if you have one) is probably:
- Irrelevant
- Using a whole load of assumptions that are probably false.
More importantly, your business model, how you do business, is also based on a whole load of false premises.
Frightened of what it means to acknowledge that things aren’t working as well as they could, you plod on pretending that your current systems are proven/tested/reliable because it causes too much heartache to start over again.
When you do go on your very occasional strategy awaydays (or whatever pretentious name you call these little excursions), you spend little time focusing on the ‘results to date’ and then spend time creating a lot of grand-sounding and impressive plans for the future. And all this is based on your existing model.
We never properly stop and check out whether we would use the same process/systems/model if we were to start again today. And that is really dumb.
So, tear up your business plan and the whole system. Bin it… erase your memory and start with a fresh, clean piece of paper.
Your old thinking was based on what you thought was right way back when; ever since then you have been justifying those original assumptions rather then considering if they were flawed then (never mind now!).
Starting afresh is liberating. No more sacred cows… all you need do is consider what it is that your customers want now (and in the future) and what is the best way of delivering it to them.
Scary but exciting! Have you got the bottle?
