"When There's No Plan A"

I've been talking to Jonathan Moules, Enterprise Editor at The Financial Times for a while about #Unplan, putting him in touch with entrepreneurs I know who embrace the 'unplan your business' philosophy. So I'm delighted to see the results of that in an article in today's FT "When There's No Plan A" featuring my #unplan buddies Gary Vaynerchuk, David Hieatt and Raj Dey. You can read the article online at FT.com here (registration applies). You can also click to view a scan of the article below (this content is copyright The Financial Times). Finally, a big shout out to my #Unplan collaborator David Sloly who was not mentioned in the article; I'd like to point out that 'Unplan Your Business' is a collaborative project with David and that he is the co-author of our free guide, that you can grab here.

Rajeeb Dey: Learn By Doing

Rajeeb Dey is passionate about start-ups and taking new ideas to market. He launched his first business when he was just 17 and although he only graduated from Oxford University in 2008 he’s already carved out an impressive portfolio of business interests. He’s Founder and CEO of Enternships -a service connecting talented students and graduates to start-ups/SMEs, and now lectures students on enterprise and business. He advocates that if people want to launch a business – especially if it is web based where the barriers to entry are so low – that they should just do it. “Learn by doing, iterate and get feedback from the market, learn as you go along” is his advice.


Here’s his take on planning and his story of how he launched Enternships

If the video above does not display properly, watch it on YouTube here.

A Story On Planning From Derek Sivers

I found this great little story ‘Let Pedestrians Define The Walkways’ on Derek Sivers’ blog last year. Derek is an entrepreneur who founded CD Baby and has experience in the music and creative industries. I’ll let Derek’s story speak for itself:

“A new green college campus was built, but one thing was still debated: Where in the grass should we put the paved walkways?

Some felt the walkways should be around the edges, to leave the center green and untouched. Some felt the walkways should cut diagonal, connecting all buildings to all buildings.

 One professor had the winning idea: ‘Don't make any walkways this year. At the end of the year, look at where the grass is worn away, showing us where the students are walking. Then just pave those paths.’

 Of course I think about this with business plans.

As time goes on, we get smarter. We learn more about our customers and what they really want. Therefore, we're at our dumbest at the beginning, and at our smartest at the end.

So when should you make business decisions? When you have the most information, when you're at your smartest: as late as possible.

 Like the college campus, you can do without walkways for a year. Resist the urge to figure it all out in advance. Realize this is when you know the least.

 When people expect you to make these decisions in advance, get used to saying, ‘We don't know yet,’ then tell this simple story about walkways, to show them how wise you are”.

Joe Oliver: Living The Unplanned Life

“I've run my business for over three years now and have lived exactly what you’re describing. Having never wrote a business plan I have been lambasted for my lack of 'planning'. However life is about surfing the good and bad waves that happen and as such my inertia of planning has allowed the business to be flexible enough to weather every kind of storm, whilst also allowing me to make split second decisions about holidays and new markets. Viva un-planning!”

Joe Oliver, Founder of Bash Creations, an eco-entertainment consultancy in London

What Is A Plan Anyway?

"A series of steps to be carried out or goals to be accomplished"


There are plans that take months (years even) and plans that are bit a more rapid than that. The business plan for Hotmail was written overnight by one of the founders Sabeer Bhatia. It was enough to secure finances to hire programmers to create the webmail service that was later sold for $400 million to Microsoft. Others are not quite so quick; taking management teams, analysts and advisors months producing financial projections, pie charts and graphs.


But if you don't require investment to get your idea up and running then maybe you only need the time it takes to drink a cup of hot tea to get your plan down on paper?