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Home > Getting Started > Business Plans > Why a Business Plan?

Waste of Management's Valuable Time

Unfortunately, most small businesses do not have business plans, relying instead on the informed (or uninformed) insight of the owners and managers. Products and services, marketing, financial needs and growth planning - issues which, directly or indirectly, impact every facet of the venture - become products of reactive thinking.

In essence, events both from within and outside the venture tend to control the business rather than the business controlling itself.

As a result of constantly adapting to current circumstances, business management devolves into intuitive short-term responses rather than a systematic, long-term, goal-oriented plan. This reactive thinking is not business planning. Reactive thinking will, in most cases, ultimately result in a waste of management’s valuable time, money, and resources. Without the existence and knowledgeable use of a proper business plan, the odds are that crises will become real, increasingly frequent and perhaps irreversible.