A Plan: Maybe You Don't Need One?

Now is the time of year when business owners start looking at next year and planning for the future. Unfortunately, as one entrepreneur told me last week, "most business owners don't plan at all."
No plan. That means they have no idea where the bus should go.
Well, maybe that's not such a bad thing. As Jim Collins (author of Good to Great) discovered, the executives who ignited the transformation from good to great did not first figure out where to drive the bus and then get people to take it there. No, they first got the right people on the bus and the wrong people off the bus. They would then figure out where to drive it.
"These business leaders said, in essence, 'Look, I don't really know where we should take this bus. But I know this much: If we get the right people on the bus, the right people in the right seats, and the wrong people off the bus, then we'll figure out how to take it someplace great,'" Collins wrote.
As you look ahead to 2009, maybe you should focus more on who is on your bus and less on where you are headed.
--Ron Ameln, SBM