To jump into business head on or study the options first, then plan and only then decide if that business is worth doing? Those believing in planning support their ideas with results of studies. The jumpers say they don’t have a plan. They are guided by a gut feeling and measuring results may not be of interest to them.
As a planner, I tried to look into the world of jumpers, while recently having a conversation with one. I wanted to understand how his decisions are made. The young businessman in question defined his strategy in the following words: “I swim under the surface, water is dirty. Every now and then I stick my head out and see where I am. Then I dive again and continue swimming”.
“Don’t you make any plans to get where you want to go?” I asked. I still did not understand how he reaches his goals. He answered “No”. Then I asked him to describe, how he travels to another city. “Well, that is easy. I go to a bus station, buy a ticket to the location and take the bus. I don’t make any kind of plan for such a thing.” Continuing on the same topic, my partner in discussion knew exactly how to go from his home to the bus station, how much money he needs for the ticket and how much time it roughly takes to get to the destination on time. To me it seemed like he had a plan, and if I went to the bus station in the city of destination on the agreed time, I would probably find him there. My partner in discussion still stuck to his opinion firmly – he does not plan.
OK, let’s not call it planning and see how his example works in business. On that same day the young businessman had a clear purpose for doing business – his employees do the job and earn him a profit. Further on, the comparison to the travelling example got too complicated as he had no more answers. He got puzzled, because he had nothing to say about the possible time and monetary expenses and steps on the journey. I now realized that he actually did not have a plan. And I could not meet him in any location. As he had no clue to where he was at a certain time in the dirty water, those interested in his well-being should probably use the theory of probability to identify when and where he could bump into his goal. Such a statement is unfortunately also backed by his company’s financial statements.
This story has made me wonder on one hand about matters like peoples’ thinking and awareness and on the other hand on the word “business plan”, the hearing of which creates a flow of strong negative emotions in many people. Little children are very creative in developing plans, for example to reach a desired object on a high shelf, which is out of their reach. Although they don’t write their plan down nor defend it in front of some committee. Not to even mention that such a plan could be forgotten in some drawer or filing cabinet to gather dust. While reaching the adulthood, planning everyday tasks are automated in our mind to such extent that we could truly claim that we are not planning a thing. Still we have meetings booked in our calendar and we have an alarm clock set to ring and we call a cab to be in the airport on time for our flight. Planning our business still seems to be the equivalent of some huge, clumsy and frightening dinosaur with sharp teeth, which we call by a horrible name of “Business Plan”. How to transform that monster into a handy tool will be discussed in our next post.

by Mari Kuljus