- The sheer enthusiasm, vigour, and even artificially fuelled excitement-funding-blinds the typical entrepreneur of the planning imperative
Source | www.entrepreneur.com | Dr Pavan Soni
One of the worst advises to be given to an entrepreneur is ‘just do it’, and yet it remains as one of the most offered. There are more upstarts that have doomed by just doing it than those who haven’t. The sheer enthusiasm, vigour, and even artificially fuelled excitement (read funding) blinds the typical entrepreneur of the planning imperative, and, alas, ‘strategy’ remains a laughingstock. No one seems to acknowledge the importance of strategy, citing that the pace is too fast to think, let alone strategize. The old dictum of ‘if you fail to plan, you are planning to fail’ is so apt for start-ups that most entrepreneur miss the point of deep thinking entirely.
Being a strategy and innovation coach, I often asked “does strategy always work?” The short answer is, no. The mischievous response then is “then why bother?” The real question on strategy is “while a strategy may not always work, but what if you don’t have a strategy and that works?” How do you manage success without a plan? It’s useless, if not counterproductive, for now you can’t replicate success, let alone learn anything from it. A sobering reminder on the strategy and planning imperative is from Larry Page who wrote, “As much as I hate process, good ideas with great execution are how you make magic.” Once again, no marks for great ideas, only execution matters.
