Small Business Planning and Business Common Sense

When I started out in business, I spent a great deal of time researching every detail that might be pertinent to the deal I was interested in making. I still do the same today. People often comment on how quickly I operate, but the reason I can move quickly is that I’ve done the background work first, which no one usually sees. I prepare myself thoroughly, and then when it is time to move ahead, I am ready to sprint. ~Donald Trump

If you have only 5 minutes to solve a business problem, you need at least the equivalent time to plan on how to solve it. Better yet, twice the amount solving it.

There are only very few business owners who never plan -they are the exceptions rather than the rules, and they are indeed exceptional in their crafts. Gifted with business intuitions and guts, they succeed. However, if you do not belong to these exceptional entities, common sense dictates that in any business endeavors, it is imperative to plan. To put it bluntly, in fact, business planning is plain common sense.

Business Planning is essential. It encompasses all the goals, strategies, and actions that you project, to ensure your business’s success. Sounds high-sounding, isn’t it? In simpler terms, think of business planning as being broken into two concepts: the profit-making side and the contingent side.

Profit making is your main business agenda, otherwise, you might want to consider building a charity organization instead, or go broke like me at the outset. XD . In this stage, you carefully and meticulosuly allocate your resources to create a viable business that will ensure you profit in the long run. Therefore, you look at your material, operational, selling and HR or people costs. You lay down these items in your business blue print. This ‘blue print’ is a dynamic document that needs to be updated throughout the life cycle of your business. You might want it in a soft format for easier updating. Microsoft Project is an excellent software tool for this ( That is not a product endorsement silly. XD)

Some business owners make business planning once, that is at the start. Some never, while others do it annually. IMO, and again, common sense dictates, business planning is most effective when it is done frequently and consistently in predetermined intervals. Schedule your frequency palnning, commit to it, and make sure that you do it religiously. Business planning is a dynamic process of reviewing progress on business goals and targets and setting new ones, that is why you have to do this frequently.

The other major aspect of business planning is contingent planning or contingency business planning. This aspect focuses on dealing with business crises, assessing beforehand the possible critical devastating scenarios (business threats) even before they occur. Insuring your business is only one part of contingency planning. A business contingency plan is a comprehensive and documented implementation plan to deal with perceived emergencies, events, or even new information affecting or may affect the viability of your business. Some calls this Risk Management. At this stage of your planning, you will assess your business strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT analysis). Based on these assessments, you will lay down the implementing mechanisms that will shelter your business from any of these perceived possible crises and scenarios.

If your committed to succeed in your business, then, it is but common sense to plan. Otherwise,

“if you fail to plan, you are planning to fail.”

Am I making sense here? Your comments please.