In today’s world of instant everything, it seems that businesses often forget the value of preparation. While everyone wants to start quick and react later, there’s good reason to slow down to plan out the critical steps, values and expectations of a company. It’s when businesses fail to recognize the importance of a written strategic business plan that they will find themselves quickly falling behind the eight ball.

Put It Down On Paper

Writing ideas down on paper, at the very least, gives you a starting point. Whether or not these ideas materialize into what you envisioned them to be is not the point. It’s ok- and frankly, it’s expected- for plans to shift throughout the initial stages. However, it’s essential to have a foundation to start with rather than nothing at all.

Physically writing out the business plan helps you to work through and foresee any pending obstacles, providing a visual instead of unorganized ideas likely to be forgotten. Furthermore, it’s your business plan that you can turn to for answers when problems that arise; when done right, it allows for learning, growth, and adaptation.

Determine Your Values

If you take a look at the top companies in the world you’ll find that the common denominator is often a set of deeply rooted values. Acting as the pillars to their culture, these values represent everything the company stands for and provides a clear picture of what their customers- and employees- can expect from them.

As for the culture of a company, taking the time to incorporate your values into the business plan, allows you to hire people that fit within your organization. Not only is this beneficial for those seeking a workplace that fits their needs but it allows employers to hire more effectively saving time, money and frustration.

Think Past the Short Term

Finally, assuming you’re on board with writing your business plan out- to which we applaud you- there’s one thing to keep in mind: you must think big picture for both the short term and long. While there’s no doubt many aspects to starting a business that need daily, immediate attention, it’s the long term plan that also needs to be addressed. Far too often businesses concern themselves with how they’ll survive the next 6, 12, and 18 months only to unravel once they’ve hit those milestones. Understanding the goals that you have a few years down the road helps to ensure that your everyday decisions cultivate that trajectory.

While every business is different, the one thing that remains the same is the need to plan ahead. As cliche as it may sound, failing to plan truly is planning to fail- and not at all the reason you got into business in the first place.

Any opinions are those of Paul Snow and not necessarily those of Raymond James. This material is being provided for informational purposes only and is not a complete description, nor is it a recommendation. The information has been obtained from sources considered to be reliable, but we do not guarantee that the foregoing is accurate or complete.