Step back. Close your eyes. Can you see the world? How big is the world in your mind? Do you see it as land masses … do you see it as a set of economic forces . . . do you see it as clusters of people? Do you see patterns of exchange that connect […]
Lets start at the beginning, shall we? A business starts with an idea. Simple really. Now, there was a time when the most common form of idea had to do with a production process or facility or material – a kind of ‘build it and they will come’ approach. This was prominent when the range […]
I’m a lazy guy. Now, sometimes people who know me consider this a ludicrous thing for me to say, but is true in a very real sense. What I mean is that I am completely unmotivated to do many things, unless I see some purpose to it. I do not go into a field […]
I was part of a discussion with someone on a public board recently, the focus of which was executive summaries for business plans. An entrepreneur was meeting with a SCORE advisor, who had asked for the ‘exec’. The drafted exec was 3 pages long! The SCORE advisor responded by saying that that 3 pages was […]
Reject business plans! Well, no, not exactly. The practice tends to be to write wide ranging, comprehensive books. These cover every possible aspect of the business, are neatly bound, have lovely graphics, moving pictures of the charismatic leader, and snazzy graphics. Cool. Ignored. Useless. Expensive. Time-burners. Let’s step back and see what actually happens, by […]
In small and medium business planning, there is much more chaos (in the mathematical sense – unpredictable within certain boundaries) than many realize. This is driven by the enormous range of possible influences on the environment, and their cross-linkages. This is truer today than ever before, and the business operator’s response demands flexibility, constant monitoring […]
A long time ago, in a place far away, was a coffee house. And that coffee house was located in a harbour town, nestled close below some arching hills, and soothed by the lapping waters of the protected berths of ships that were safe home from the sea. And life was good.
Until, one day, […]
Business plan models deal with relationships in time. Many entrepreneurs and independent business owner/operators understand their operations in terms of units – so many sheets of plywood, so many tons of steel, so many pounds of flour, so much work in hours, this many machines, that much floor space, this customer, and that customer, the […]
In the beginning, there was created the heavens and the seas, and the birds and the bees, and humans. Sort of. So what is human, anyway. Well, a really good case could be made that humans are the animals with an advanced high capacity pre-frontal cortex. (Look, if you are gonna go there, leave me […]
Time for some clichés. “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” No? How about “The world stands aside to let anyone pass who knows where he is going.”
You are about to take a single step. The path in front of you has quicksand, bogs, steep hills, giddy downhills, siren songs, enemy […]
