Winners have a plan, then adapt.

The wealthiest man in Japan, Tadashi Yanai, has a business plan that looks 300 years into the future, but allows for annual updates. To date, he’s worth more than $6 billion.

This testament to making what is unseen visible begs the question: why aren’t others planning and building according to plan?

Does your business have a real plan? Hearsay speculates that less than 10% of all businesses are managed according to a plan that is more comprehensive than an annual set of target numbers. This is a serious problem.

Most companies putter along without a plan. Many of those companies suffer from a serious lack of vision and discipline.

As a result, they are not growing. Here are several red flags:

• “We don’t have a five-year plan. We don’t have a five-month plan.”
• “Our revenue line has been the same for the past five years.”
• “Our industry is all me-too, so we just copy what’s hot and get a little piece of that trend.”

It doesn’t matter if it is a manufacturing company, an importing concern, a logistics firm, or a software or service business. This lack of a plan keeps these businesses reacting to the market like a ship without a rudder. Instead of growing into a force in their industries, they choose to wither, lose market share, and move further away from a leading position.

Even worse, without a plan companies make decisions based on what worked a decade or two decades ago, even though the rest of the world has moved on.

Mister Yanai doesn’t need to worry about growth because he has both a plan and a vision that keep him focused, humble, and growing. He has the certainty of a plan and the agility of adapting the plan each year. Yanai stays upbeat and takes ups and downs in stride. He claims, I might look successful but I’ve made many mistakes. People take themselves too seriously. You have to be positive and believe you will find success next time.

He has a plan—a good one.

With WaveRock, you can too.