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Voted #6 on Top 100 Family Business influencer on Wealth, Legacy, Finance and Investments: Jacoline Loewen My Amazon Authors' page Twitter:@ jacolineloewen Linkedin: Jacoline Loewen Profile

April 22, 2011

Business plans don’t help in early stages - The Globe and Mail

If anyone believes the value of the business plan is the finished document, this article may be at least partially right. As someone who led the planning exercise in many companies, I learned that the journey was far more valuable than the destination.
Planning brings structured thinking to the business, and helps to ensure that key questions are posed for discussion. Everything in a business is connected. A decision to take a certain action will also produce re-actions. They need to be accounted for, and, if necessary, mitigated. The planning process helps to tie the pieces together, and keeps the pieces focused on the current objectives.
The inference in the article is that a plan will make a company less nimble and flexible. It might do that, if that's how planning is approached. But it doesn't have to be that way, nor should it.Planning brings structured thinking to the business, and helps to ensure that key questions are posed for discussion. Everything in a business is connected. A decision to take a certain action will also produce re-actions. They need to be accounted for, and, if necessary, mitigated. The planning process helps to tie the pieces together, and keeps the pieces focused on the current objectives.

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