Business Planning: What Are the Common Misconceptions?

Many businesses operate with a type of mechanical approach. It is learned and refined through a lot of trial and error, in-the-moment decision-making, and a bit of good luck. 

This strategy is based on practices that work in operations for the time being. However, without long-range planning, these ad hoc arrangements tend to be limited in capacity; they cannot grow very well. 

Many small and medium-sized businesses still do not use business planning, even when management is aware their current practices are not forward-looking. Instead, they use scheduling and metrics only as default targets. It is only until significant financing is needed that business planning starts being applied out of necessity. 

Much of the problem comes from stubborn myths about business planning, and here is why those myths need to be thrown off once and for all.

Myth 1: There Is No Time for What-if Planning

A business plan functions like a road map, telling you where you are and where you are going. However, it takes effort to put it together. 

Many small businesses and medium-sized operations feel so busy trying to grow that they do not feel they have the time to spare for long-range planning. In reality, it is one of the biggest mistakes to make when growing. Some may feel afraid they do not have the skills needed for the task. 

Both problems can be solved by bringing in outside planning help experienced in writing business plans.

Myth 2: Business Plans Don’t Get Used

The reasons business plans are not used may be that the company has outgrown the current plan. The fix is to write a new one that makes sense and can be used. 

Revising and updating a plan is also essential to make it useful as conditions and the business itself changes over time. This is why corporations update their business plans every year, rewriting their new assumptions in a business plan revision.

Myth 3: Business Plans Are Only for Financing

While it is true that plans are required for investment, especially from commercial vendors, that is not their only purpose. Plans help solidify targets as well as hold different company teams and programs to their targets as well. They provide long-term direction and short-term deliverable objectives. Not making a plan is like operating with an unnecessary blindfold.

Myth 4: I Have a Business Already, So a New Plan Is Useless

This logic follows the idea that business planning is only used for starting a business, which is not correct. A business plan provides a strategy to take the given business in a specific direction, how to grow it, and what needs to be done to adjust the business for internal and external changes.

The idea that no further planning needs to be done once a business is up and running is just silly. Every business can benefit from further planning and direction strategy going forward.

Plan for Success With Our Business Attorney in PA

A BKG business attorney resource can help with making breakthroughs. In some respects, getting started with a business plan is prone to running into writer’s block. 

Where to get started? What should it have? What doesn’t make sense to include? What is fluff, and what is the material? All these questions and more can be straightened out and refined with a key assumptions business plan strategy provided by an experienced business attorney. 

Braverman Kaskey Garber is a resource for companies of all types and sizes. Whether starting up or needing to evolve to the next level, our legal team provides the critical assistance that helps companies reach their next level of performance.

Keep this in mind that any company in any industry will eventually need to deal with legal risks, limitations, and regulations. Having a qualified legal resource brought in from the beginning can help avoid a lot of preventable pitfalls before they become a serious cost for the new company or one that is moving to the next level. 

Braverman Kaskey Garber is ready to get started when you are, strengthening assumptions in a business plan the right way. It is never too late to start planning where you want to be versus just reacting to where you are as a business.