An associate of mine told me the story of when he was on the Marine soccer team many years ago, and their team strategy was: Bad plans carried out violently sometimes yield good results. Do something.

They weren’t the most talented team out there. They played a Brazilian team that was like watching a Monet get painted, or poetry in motion - something like that. The ball stuck to the Brazilians’ feet like Velcro and they passed and controlled beautifully. When the Marines were lucky enough to get in the way, they would kick the ball as far down the field as they could, run under it and hope they got there first.

It was a bad plan, but the Marines carried it out with commitment, and more often than not, their bad plan worked better than the Brazilian’s good plan.  Why? Because the Marines were more committed to executing their bad plan than the Brazilian team was to their good one.   The Brazilians were too busy thinking about how good theirs was, the Marines were busy doing theirs.  The Marines didn’t win the league, but they went far beyond their collective skill set, and made it to the finals. Not bad for a bad plan carried out violently.

Good business works just like our Marine soccer team. Somebody did a study of sales people who make over $250,000 and found out that the #1 reason for their success was SPEED OF EXECUTION. It wasn’t how smart they were, or how much better their product was than they next guy.  And it certainly wasn’t that their plan was better then somebody else’s. When something came along that would help their business, they moved on it faster then the next guy (who was busy developing a good plan) and made more money.

Have you ever really come up with a good plan anyway? How many business plans have held up for more than a few weeks before they began to change because they came in contact with the real world? What you thought was a good plan was just a bad plan that you spent way too much time on before you implemented it. If you would have exposed it to the real world earlier, you could have perfected it much more quickly.

Really. Speed of Execution is the #1 indicator of success in business. Get there before the next guy. There was a book written a while back that sums it up in the title “It’s not the big who eat the small, it’s the quick who eat the slow.” I never read it because the title gave it all away.

Execute Now. Perfect Later. I’m not advocating you run your business on bad plans. I’m advocating that you stop thinking about it, and perfect it by getting it into practice as quickly as possible.  The real world will inform you as to what has to change to perfect it, much better than any amount of guessing about the future will ever do.

By the way, Fortune 500 businesses can’t afford to run on bad plans like we can.  Smaller businesses have a huge advantage because of this.  If the F500 put in place a plan and it has holes in it, it will cost them millions of dollars and possibly a lot of negative publicity, worth even more millions of dollars.  If we put in place a bad plan and it has some holes in it, we lose at worst a few hundred or even a few thousand dollars, adjust quickly, and move on.  Our ability to adjust quickly, and the lower cost of making a mistake in the real world allows us to beat the big guy by being the fast guy.  It’s really not fair being smaller, but who said life is fair?

The Necessity of a traditional Business Plan?  None – have a Business Plan that works in the real world vs. sitting on a shelf or in a banker’s hands.

Business Plans (Strategies) are valuable to you, the owner, ONLY when they actually help you do the following 6 things:

1) Acquire new customers — Most traditional business plans fail miserably here.
2) Retain existing customers — Most traditional business plans fail miserably here.
3) Ensure your idea actually works (viability) — Most traditional business plans fail miserably here.
4) Makes you profitable quickly — Most traditional business plans fail miserably here.
5) Sets you up for long-term stability — Most traditional business plans fail miserably here.
6) Helps you measure success very specifically – what are your “numbers”? — Most traditional business plans fail miserably here.

The 5 reasons most traditional business plans fail at the above are:
1) People spend too much time on them - the Plan becomes the Business itself.
a. Don’t hide from the real work by doing your business plan.
2) We believe our spreadsheets
a. Anybody can be profitable on paper.
b. Prove it in the real world before you spend a lot of time on a Plan.
3) They (traditional business plans) aren’t developed for us but for a banker.
As long as the spreadsheets look good, and the Plan is very detailed and complex, the banker is happy.
4) They are way too complex. There are very few numbers and other indicators that matter – most Plans are so complex we lose sight of those critical few measuring tools.
5) The real world doesn’t apply - too many Plans are done before any business occurs - if at all possible, try your business on a micro-level first - if it succeeds you will need very little in the way of a business plan (the plan will be responding to your success).  If it fails, you won’t need one either.

The most important parts of the Business Plan are the ones the bank cares the least about - 1) your lifetime goals, and 2) your first Waypoint for getting there.
If you don’t know these, your plan is in trouble from the start.

In addition to your lifetime goals here are the 5 questions I think your “bad plan” should answer:
1. What are you building? (Vision)
2. Why does your business exist? (Mission)
3. What results will you measure? (Objectives)
4. How will you build this business? (Strategy)
5. What is the work to be done? (Action Plans)

The key to success is putting together a bad plan that will carry you to success – and continuing to put in place bad plans that you can carry out quickly, then perfect as you go.

1. Get the plan into production at the very earliest opportunity.  As soon as you have something you think might be viable, test it out in the real world.   Stop thinking about doing it, and do it.   Move on simple hypotheses, not tested theories.
2. Get some feedback from others that you’re not crazy, and keep moving.
3. Carry it out violently. (or in business terms, with complete commitment). BURN THE SHIPS! Are you really committed to success or to random hope?  It may be a bad plan, but it’s better than the non-plan you used to have, and the best way to perfect it is to get moving on it and let the process inform you how to fix it.  If you just fool around with it, don’t expect to win.  Be totally committed to it.  Charge the hill violently.  It’s what makes the Marine’s successful, and if you think you’re not in battle for the top of the hill in business, take another look around you.  There’s flak flying everywhere.  Bonus – If you’re moving, you’re less likely to get hit!
4. Perfect as you go. The problem is that we either a) think about the plan forever and don’t do it, or b) implement it immediately and then never learn and improve on it. The whole point of contact with the real world is to give you a better chance of turning your bad plan into a great one.   Your bad plan becomes a good plan only if you take the feedback the real world is giving you and constantly tweak the plan.

Entrepreneurial types love to roll out bad plans quickly - it’s a great strength. They also get bored easily and rarely perfect the plan they’ve rolled out. It’s a great weakness.  As you get feedback from contact with the real world, perfect the plan.  If you don’t, your bad plan will never become a good plan, and you will not be able to ride that bad plan to success.

Manager types never roll out the plan – they just perfect it forever.  And Craftsmen types don’t see the need for one – for them putting a plan together would cut into production time.   You need a plan.

Time kills deals, and it kills businesses. Figure out the essentials and get moving. Then focus intently on constantly improving the bad plan until it runs itself.

Most businesses are stuck in Survival. The idea is to move from Survival through profitable Success to Significance. We don’t get there largely because we want to “get it right” before we do anything that would actually help us get it right. Get a bad plan and carry it out with commitment, perfect it as you go, and watch your business grow.

This will also help get you off the treadmill and back to the passion that brought you into business in the first place.  But who would want to do that.  Let’s just sit around and think about perfecting our plans.  Or worse yet, let’s put the bad plan in play and not do anything to perfect it as we go.

Carpe diem (”seize the day”.) and all that stuff. Like the Chinese proverb says: “The best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago. The next best time is today.” Stop thinking about it, go dig a hole, and plant something that will help you grow your business.

What bad plan have you been thinking about too long? Get moving on it.  TODAY!