The first time I heard the phrase "business plan" was when I was purchasing manager of a division of Becton Dickinson. That exercise given to me by the Controller was actually to just set prices on 10,000+ components for the year ahead.
Click HERE for the 2024 edition of Writing the Winning Business Plan
Years later as the EVP of that division, a request to write a business plan was little more than the production of reams of financials that would be sent on to the corporate finance office. Shortly after that, I became president of the leveraged buyout of that division and only then learned from our PE partners the real purpose of a business plan. And, it was at that time, I fell in love with the concept, the strategic planning, the tactical balancing of expenses, people and egos...and just the intensity of the really tough work it took to go through the process. On one hand very tough and consuming work, and yet, on the other, with an experienced management team, there is just nothing better than creating a cohesive business plan that pulls everyone together for the year ahead.
We sold that company to Litton Industries, who brought another level of intensity to the term "business planning", and shortly after that I left to explore what the world of entrepreneurship was all about.
Today, given my work at our consulting company, my teaching at the Derby Entrepreneurship Center at Tufts, and as a partner in a venture firm, I review 500-800 business plans a year.
Many of those, I give what I call "a first-pass investor read" of 15 minutes merely to see if there is any fit in that plan to anything I do.
Working with my own students and fellow professors, of course, there's much more intensity in both time and depth. And then once or twice a year, with colleagues, I actually push myself through the wringer starting with a blank whiteboard and ending up a few months later with an assembled document, pretty good financials, a one page summary and a bunch of slides.
Along this journey, I have for a long time created an eBook on "How to Write a Winning Business Plan". Originally, I started it for an ME course at MIT where I'm an instructor, where I wanted to bring some level of an orderly process to the chaos of countless books and articles since, after all, I'm working with engineering students. What I wanted to do then and still today is to provide a "How To" book rather than merely talk about the strategic importance of planning.
Since that time, I've used the book for a wide variety of purposes at universities, with first-time entrepreneurs and with experienced corporate managers. I also use it as a personal mechanism of my own review, whenever I'm thinking about cofounding another startup. That discipline usually results in my quickly rejecting whatever we were thinking about as a potential business.
At the end of every December, I take the time to do a full rewrite which I just finished. I was surprised to discover how much of what I had written only a year ago was either out of date, or just did not apply to the year of 2024 which we're forecasting to be a strong growth year even with the obvious questions that the wars and the elections are bringing with it.
You can find the book HERE,
Hopefully, you will find this of value whether you're a corporate manager or a first time or serial entrepreneur.
Take a look, give me some comments when you can, plus I would love to get your perspective on 2024: Is this a year of growth or cautious optimism...or something else.
Have a great day selling today and a superb weekend!
www.derbymanagement.com
Derby Entrepreneurship Center@Tufts.
