I was very happy to meet journalist Daria Steigman a couple of weeks ago for a phone interview, even more so after seeing the results of that interview, a piece called Planning Matters: myths and musts about business planning on the International Association of Business Communicators (IABC) website.
Daria does a very nice summary of our talk. She hits all the right points.
I want to refer you here to that piece, rather than trying to repeat it; but I will repeat here her concluding paragraph, which makes a whole lot of sense to me:
When the economy is humming and business opportunities abound, it can be tempting to skip the planning and just move to the working part. But what happens when your fortunes change? Planning isn’t designed to lock you into where you are. Rather, it’s designed to help your business identify its strengths and weaknesses and understand the competitive landscape-and prepare you to make course corrections along the way. Or, to quote former U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower, “The plan is useless. But planning is essential.”
Tim Berry is the founder and chairman of Palo Alto Software and Bplans.com. Follow him on Twitter @Timberry.
