industries

Unplan Your New Business

If you're starting a new business, or it's still in early stages, you might be better off "unplanning" it than producing a formal business plan. Recently, I judged a student business plan competition because, among other things, I produce business plans for a living.

By Tony Wanless /

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Take it from Natalie Sisson, “unplanning” your business can help you reap riches untold.

If you’re starting a new business, or it’s still in early stages, you might be better off “unplanning” it than producing a formal business plan.

Recently, I judged a student business plan competition because, among other things, I produce business plans for a living.

Frankly, I was underwhelmed by most of them. Not because they were awful – some were, some were great – but because the traditional business plan strikes me as an increasing anachronism in this modern world of agile development, rapid change, and continually evolving customer tastes.

Certainly, if you’re a large enterprise planning for the next two-five years, you need a plan. If you’re seeking investment, you definitely need one – investors don’t really care about them, but they do care that you’ve thought through how to take your business to a much higher level.

But for startups and small businesses based on information or thinking – which are increasingly the norm today – I think you’re better off just launching, and testing the market for your idea. 
 
I say this because most start-ups really don’t know what they’re going to be doing. They may have an idea, have determined a need, and therefore spotted an opportunity that they think they can fill. 
 
But they won’t know if they’re right until that concept is tested in the marketplace. Besides, they don’t really have a clue where their interests will take them. It’s not unusual for new businesses, especially service businesses, to change direction several times as they meet the market and have to face up to reality. 
 
Take the case of Natalie Sisson, who has just launched a new online business for female entrepreneurs. WomanzWorld aims to be “the ultimate resource for female entrepreneurs.”
 
Sisson is sort of a poster girl for entrepreneurs who follow their heart and find themselves in places they had never dreamed of. 
 
A New Zealander, Sisson’s prowess in Ultimate Frisbee took her around the world, primarily to Britain where she won championships and plied her trade as a marketer, then eventually to Vancouver in 2008 for a world Ultimate Frisbee tournament. 
 
In Vancouver, she was at a networking event and met entrepreneur Daryl Hatton. Next thing she knew, they had started a tech company called ConnectionPoint, which produced a product, FundRazr, that uses social networks to aid fundraising for small volunteer organizations. 
 
In her own words, Sisson learned very quickly how to take an idea to launch, build a team and create a product, how to create a one-page business summary, a two-page investor teaser, and eventually a full business plan, develop a positioning statement (and change it again and again), build a financial model based on assumptions and market research, and understand the art of agile (software) development. 
 
Basically Sisson learned how to “unplan” a business. This doesn’t mean having no plan, but substituting a series of goals instead in the early stages. 
 
The goal-oriented “unplan” also is increasingly being used in place of a formal marketing plan. By setting singular quarterly goals, new or young business, can develop their market, assess regularly, and make changes quickly in response. 
 
I don’t know if Sisson has unplanned her new business, but I suspect she has. It seems like a natural thing to do.