SME CLINIC With Kola Owolabi
We all know why plans are made in virtually all endeavours of life. Plans determine the lifespan of anything in life. When a country comes up with a five-year development plan, that plan is deemed to have expired after five years. Everything about that plan is laid to rest after the five years have elapsed. One can also correlate it with the term of office that elected officials spend in office. For example, if a president is elected for a four year term, he ceases to be the president after the four years end. Unless he wins reelection to the same office, he has to leave the office. The tenure of that person is gone forever immediately his term of office is exhausted.
When you have a business, the only way to guarantee its existence and success is to plan for the business and how it is going to succeed within a defined period of time. The document you use to prepare for success for that defined period of time is the business plan. Most business plans are prepared using a five-year projection. Just like a politician that is elected to the office for a five year term is sure, all things being equal, to spend those five years in office successfully without any hindrance, the business plan that you have prepared with a five-year time horizon is sure to guide the entrepreneur on how to make a success of the business at least for those five years.
Before the five years elapse, it is necessary to prepare another plan for a subsequent five-year period. If you follow that process you see your business just surviving and succeeding in succession for as long as you desire and commensurately plan for. Politicians who are elected for a fixed term of office start to plan for reelection a long way before their initial term of office expires.
A politician who does his homework very well and prepares conscientiously for reelection is sure to be reelected barring unforeseen circumstances. It means that a well prepared plan, and which is equally well executed ensures security of tenure for an elected politician and for an entrepreneur who is saddled with starting and growing a business.
Coming home to the life of starting and growing a business, it is risky to leave anything to chance. If you start and go on running that business without a well-articulated business plan it means that you are leaving the life of that business to chance. No pilot departs a journey without a flight plan that leads to a defined destination. He doesn’t take off and says he will fly as the weather dictates and as the conditions in the skies determine. He has a fair idea of what the weather and conditions in the sky will be before taking off. These are what help in determining a flight plan well ahead of departure. When he is airborne, he is confident that the flight will be a success because he has prepared significantly well enough to handle any eventuality that the weather and atmospheric conditions may throw up.
He may even engage the auto pilot and take a nap (there is also a co-pilot complementing him). We all know that air crashes are very far between. Crashes are an infinitesimal proportion of flights that take off every day. That is why people still consider air travel very safe.
Crashes in business can be held to the barest minimum if entrepreneurs have a flight plan (business plan) as articulate as what pilots use and what politicians use when seeking for reelection.
The virtue of the business plan lies in its ability to provoke solutions ahead of problems that may crop up in the future, particularly within the time frame of that business plan. What is happening today is sufficient guide of what will happen in a few years down the line. With the benefit of that hindsight you can guarantee the lifespan of your business, and its enduring success by the business plan you put in place to run the business.
Kola Owolabi (FIMC) Fellow of the Institute of Management Consultants, is the Executive Director of Centre of Entrepreneurial Research and Development based in Igbesa, a surburb of greater Lagos, in the vicinity of Crawford University. The organization has had the opportunity to execute landmark business development (business plan preparation and conduct of feasibility studies) and rmarket research briefs for organizations both within and outside Nigeria. The organization’s discriminating competence lies in its ability to help prospective entrepreneurs plan and execute market entry intentions across all kinds of markets and industries. He can be reached by phone or WhatsApp through 08023203198.
