Today, let’s talk about doing something for the first
time. Whether it is a sport, or
doing a business plan, the first few times most of us do something, we are
cautious... too cautious. Why,
because we have to think too much while we are doing the sport or business
plan. Thinking is a slow and often
over-rated process.
So, let’s take doing that business plan for the first
time. There are over achievers out
there who want to produce a fifty page plan, after ultimate research. What usually happens? It is studied to
death. No one steps up and owns
it. It sits on the shelf.
The ExcellPugetSound lesson here is the first time you do
something, like a business plan, start small and learn from doing. Then go do it again.
The secret about business plans and much of what we learn is
that the learning is from trying it and seeing what you can improve upon the
next time. With business owners
who have never done a plan (this includes one business at over $200M in sales),
it is important to put a stake in the ground and then communicate around
it. Have a plan for collecting
feedback and then do it again... only the second time, think about expanding
who gets involved. After years of
planning, you will end up like one company I have worked with (probably the
best annual planners I know) saying that you are still learning and
improving.
There is a second reason why the first time you do something
it is about caution. I remember
being on our high school’s gymnastic team (perhaps mascot would have been a
better position). We had some
really outstanding athletes and had been state champs two years running. At the state meet that year, one of our
teammates was introduced over the loudspeaker system as attempting a dismount
that had never been done in a high school meet. I still remember the words, “... for the first time
in....” My teammate pulled it off
flawlessly.
Why? Because it was not the first time he had ever done the
dismount. I watched him hundreds
of times as he broke down the maneuver and did very small parts, perfecting
them, and then put those together.
What the audience at the state meet did not see is first
time caution because the move had been practiced and repeated. What many of my teammates had not
experienced was all the planning that this guy did. On the way home from school (nine months before the state
meet) he talked (I was the audience) about what it would take to learn and then
be ready to do this move at the state meet.
By the time he made it to state, he had muscle memory and
nine months of steadily improving results. Now go out there and plan for how you will take advantage of
the economic recovery.
