We always talk about (and even write about in Trucker Management) that planning, from business planning to contingency planning, is key to small business success - and it is. At the same time however, there comes a time when enough is enough and it's time to stop planning and start doing.
A Junior Chamber chapter this year experienced how over planning can be overkill. JCI provides tools and templates for the individual chapter to complete a yearly business plan. The challenge is that the organization has a pretty diverse mission and a vague target market (only defined by age). In one city, the JC's may look like a business networking association, in another a community club and in another a social group. The other challenge is that the Board of Directors completely changes over every year, so the plan starts from scratch every year. Every chapter struggles with trying to be everything to everyone. So, this chapter we're talking about, spent many months planning who they were, who their target market was and what programming would occur. Then when the President had to leave half way through the year, the new board had to go back into planning mode before the first plan was complete. For 7 months the chapter was planning what it would be doing for the year, even though the year was almost over.
In September, the chapter realized enough is enough and that the planning phase had actually deterred members from attending and joining. So in September they DID something, not just talked about it. The talk on the town the last few weeks had much and improved.
A good quote to sum this up is:
Ready. Fire. Aim.
is better than
Ready. Aim. Aim. Aim. Aim. Aim...
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