Tim Berry’s post about Business Plan Software and Business Plan Consultants really struck a chord with me. Once again, Tim took a point a view that I really believe in and expressed it much better than I.
By the way, in addition to Business Plan Pro, Tim’s company also makes a piece of software called Marketing Plan Pro powered by Duct Tape Marketing – so now you know my bias.
Tim’s post is about what he feels is the right way and the wrong way for business plan consultants to use software in a consulting engagement. Tim mentions a few reasons why experts often chose the “wrong” way. I’d like to offer a couple of other reasons, based on my experience both as a consultant and working with consultants, as to why consultants may chose the wrong way – both of which can be summarized as misplaced focus:
Focusing on billable hours – Tim’s post was about his pet peeve, and this idea that “experts sell time” is one of my pet peeves. There are lots of reasons I’m against the billable hour, but one of the biggest reasons is it tends to makes us think we should be trying to be efficient when we really should be focusing on being effective.
Being effective takes time. Teaching someone to use a tool (software) takes time. Not only to learn the tool, but to change habits as well. But, once we learn to use the tool, we become more efficient.
Ironically, rushing to get things accomplished early often leads rework, and we end up not really saving time at all. Looking back, how many time would a little patience at the beginning of a project saved time and effort in the long run?
Focusing on the plan (document) rather than the process. Along with the billable hour issue, I think this misplaced focus distorts whole customer\expert relationship. As Tim mentioned, the customer owns the business plan and the plan lives in the customers space – at least that’s how it should be.
When the focus is on billable hours and the document, the plan belongs to the expert until it is turned over to the customer for payment. The focus is on the writing, rather than the planning, testing, gathering feedback, adjusting, etc.
The roles and responsibilities tend to get mixed up in this scenario as well. Rather than working together, the expectation becomes that the expert drives the process and is responsible to “ask the right questions” until the plan is delivered. Then once the plan is delivered, the customer’s role becomes that of the editor and the critic.
Is it too bold to say these problems stem from focusing on us (consultants) vs. them (customers)? It’s easy to say we focus on our customers, but it takes effort to put that into everyday practice.
And what about when we are the customer? Are we taking the easy way out by pretending all of the responsibility belongs to the consultant?
, Tim Berry makes these points much more eloquently than I ever could. Tim argues that the planning process (along with regular reviews) is so important that business owners just need to get started somewhere, anywhere, and continue to build your plan as your needs change. This is 180 degrees different from the classical "big bang" approach to business planning where we work for months at a time developing a huge document before we ever get started working on the business.
