Starting up - the first 100 days
Oct 03
Simple 100 day plan
I was talking to a few of the start ups I had invested in recently and some themes started emerging for me in terms of the ones that were successful and the ones that were not.
One of the striking characteristics of the successful ones was the planning that went into the launch. I know that you have probably all heard about the six P’s (proper precise planning prevents poor performance) or ‘failing to plan is planning to fail’ etc but what struck me was the quality of the plans that went into the planning for the first 100 days in particular.
By definition, if you have raised monies through a business plan - you have a plan! However, what I noticed was a depth to the plans that many of the successful businesses I had invested in shared. Here the entrepreneurs could see what they would be doing and were living the plan.
If you are in business and facing a difficult time or if you are starting a business, I think writing down a 100 day action plan would be a great start out of your problems or to see you through an effective start.
Writing down a 100 day detailed plan - hand in hand with a cashflow projection is a great way for you to start seeing the links between your actions today and your cash balance tomorrow.
Once you have written the plan, have it checked and ‘sanitised’ by a friend or spouse (in my experience the terms are mutually exclusive!) preferably someone who is not too close to the situation as they may always be able to add a common sense check to your plans.
The problem with long term plans is that I think they can be lazy and can make you just ‘wish’ a better future and hope that all is OK. As we have seen from the last few weeks, we do live in very volatile times. If you were working in the strategy team of a bank - I doubt if any of your plans which are more than a month old are still meaningful.
If you have a tight focused plan - it can be great to see the impact of variances to the plan immediately and therefore what you need to do to address that situation.
The danger with making plans which last longer than 100 days (you may feel that this is too long and you go for fifty days) is that it will lose focus and you add too many unknowns into the plan. You are also in danger of merely writing about the business rather than running it!
Happy running!
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