Business Evolved

The difference between planning and strategy is more than just semantics.  Commonly the two are used interchangeably when in fact they are descriptive of two very separate ways of thinking and acting.

The foremost difference is in the environment that each take place.  Planning is a way of identifying actions required for a specific outcome in a fixed environment with fixed variables.  You can plan to bake bread because there are constants such as the ingredients in particular amounts using heat at a specific temperature.  You can plan a goal and action list for any hypothetical situation where there are no ‘what if’ factors.

Strategy on the other hand is a way of setting goals that are not specific in a dynamic environment.  You can use strategy to build a business over a 10 year period because you can not ‘plan’ when you do not know the factors, most of which may be major adjustments, in advance.  In this way we can not also plan on how our long term relationships or even our career path will play out.

The proper way to employ strategy is to first set a non specific goal or one that can be adjusted as the dynamics of your environment change.  For example, you could say your goal is to enter into a particular vertical market but a better strategy goal is to say you would like to triple your profit margin in 3-5 years using a vertical market approach.  Then we can target a particular market but if that vertical takes a dive we can still adjust our actions and align our vision without ‘failing’ to realize our real target - making more money.  Products, clients and verticals may change but we are always on track to achieve the real end goal which is to grow our bottom line.

The strategic style of vision and goal setting has both a mental and real world benefit.  While planning provides and easy way to make an action list from beginning to end, our lives and businesses rarely follow such a rigid list of steps.  We benefit by always moving towards a goal, even if we have to side step.  Mentally we never see true failure because we are always on the right path to success.

Business Evolved has captured business owners, leaders and managers for many years with its articles based on growing small to medium sized businesses.  With today’s pressures on the business leaders, I felt like this blog needed to evolve as well.

The truth is businesses are no longer what need to evolve - I may have been wrong in thinking so from the beginning.  While many of the readers of Business Evolved have thanked me and my contributors (and I thank all of them for their support), I feel that it is the leaders of business that need to evolve in order to bring their companies to new heights.  Its the evolution in leadership that drives the true vision of a company.

Some changes that you will see:

1.  All the old content has been wiped.  It is my mission to bring you new content that will help you find leadership in a new light.

2.  Less contributors…a lot less.  I want to center only on content that will bring an enlightened look at leadership.

3.  A new fresh look to Business Evolved.

4.  A power blog which will be a category dedicated to small, one paragraph posts intended to jar our minds and wake up the leader inside of us.

5.  A center on the spiritual drive of a leader.  Note that I did not say religious.  Spiritual philosophy is about making the world a better place through our actions and relies on no specific religion.  That said, much of the spiritual philosophy I talk about in my keynotes are based on Chinese texts that are contributed to the birth of Taoism and Zen.

Thanks for being patient and accepting of this transition, I hope it becomes as important to you as it is for myself.

Dominic Willett