Overplanning can be as damaging as no planning.  The small business planning process must balance between planning and doing.

Hans von Bülow the virtuouso concert pianist was due to visit the Konzerthaus in Vienna to play Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1. His beloved Steinway piano was enroute. But there was some concern that it wouldn’t fit through the stage door.

To damage the Steinway trying to get it through would be a disaster. So the bright young floor manager suggested that they build a full size replica piano in the workshop and use it to test whether the Steinway would fit through the stage doors.

A week later, after some expense and effort, the replica piano was ready for testing. Stage hands were assembled, management looked on anxiously, though none as anxiously as the bright young floor manager. Problem was they couldn’t move the replica piano because it wouldn’t fit through the workshop doors…..

A bad case of overplanning and losing site of the horizon. Small business planning can be a delicate balance between planning and just getting on with it.

Small business usually comprises two types of individual:  planners who don’t do much and do’ers who don’t plan much. The Intrapreneur (i.e. the entrepreneur on the inside of your business) must find the right balance between the two.

How? Simply, the Intrapreneur must learn to do both at the same time and all of the time.

Small business planning is more a state of mind than a written document. But it can’t function on its own. It needs to sit alongside the real action. It needs to see what’s really going on in the business and make adjustments to itself as it goes along.

The Intrapreneur wears his business plan like a suit. It follows him round whilst he is ‘doing’. He moves around the business being curious. Adding value. Exchanging information. And all the while he is mentally updating the plan. A little adjustment here, a little adjustment there.

It is only at the end of the day, perhaps when others have gone home, that he downloads these thoughts into his planning document. (His small business planning procedure ensures that he doesn’t change the official document on the fly but proposes changes at the next review meeting).

If he has a real need to sit behind a desk for long periods then he does so in the privacy of his own home.

Small business planning and small business ‘doing’ can – and must – happily co-exist in equal measure.

The Intrapreneur who can grasp this grasps the business.

.

Similar Posts:

• Effective leadership in small business: The Intrapreneur
• Entrepreneur or Intrapreneur?
• Intrapreneur – Work Smarter Not Harder