Business Plans For Dummies, 3rd Edition

Introduction

So, you were searching the web for something about business start-ups, or maybe you were assigned to honcho a hot new project at the office, and up pops a promo for this book. You clicked “buy now.” Sweet, we like you already! Great minds must think alike because while you may not know how to construct a business plan yet, you’re savvy enough to have surmised that a plan is important — which is exactly what we know. From years of working with numerous organizations both large and small, old and new, profit or nonprofit, local or global in scope, we concluded that a business plan is more than just another factor for goal achievement — indeed, it’s usually the single most important task prior to actually jumping in there and getting started!

Some people visualize a business plan as something they have to put together to raise money for a new venture or convince the higher-ups to sign off on for some upcoming project — at best, a formality with lots of splashy PowerPoints in which all graph curves streak upward; at worst, a waste of everyone’s precious time and effort. But you don’t create a business plan just to secure funding or check a bureaucratic box; au contraire! Rather, you should embrace and own your plan as a powerfully performative tool — one that makes your organization a better place at which to work and your business a more successful operation for everyone it touches.

Is a business plan a guarantee? Hardly. In today’s “VUCA” world (Volatility, Uncertainty, ...