Planning is difficult, it goes against are instincts. If it was easy, we would all do it well. Although planning is critical to your success, it is often replaced with:
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- Intuition or “gut feeling. = you have always been taught to go with your gut feeling.
- Lack of know-how = difficult to know how to plan and what to plan for.
- Fear of the unknown = you are dealing with the problems of today, how can worry about what’s going to happen in the future.
- Inexactness = plans never working out exactly the way they should, so why plan?
These obstacles are real. However, they must be overcome if you are to be successful. While we may find it difficult to face the future, heading into it without any direction is much worse. So what’s the answer. Well Oprah found one this week, she called a great idea, whose time has come . She called is a 6-part guide but it is The One Page Business Plan® by Jim Horan.
I ave been associated with 1PBP for several years and have always been impressed by its simplicity but the difficulty in making it simple. This 6-part guide is tough but why? Because it forces you to ask yourself tough questions. However, if you use it the results are tremendous. I encourage you to use it through out your organization for not only business planning but also departmental planning and performance planning. The real coolness of this instrument is that if everyone uses the same plan, planning becomes second nature and that lack of know-how, fear of the unknown and inexactness.