We’ve just completed a study of business planning in small businesses and found that both failing and successful businesses had invested in business planning to similar degrees. The difference is that successful businesses measured their progress against what they had planned and took corrective action while failing businesses tended to ignore the plan.
The steps of the planning process are simple:
Plan
Execute
Get Results
Measure them
Analyze and compare them against what was planned
Modify the plan
Begin to execute again.
If all businesses took the time to follow these steps they would be better able to react to the constant change in their business environment.