CREATING A PLAN FOR BRINGING YOUR VISIONARY ENTERPRISE TO LIFE

We often hear from colleagues how challenging it can be to launch and sustain a visionary or socially conscious small enterprise, primarily because most of the available resources are intended for larger, more traditional businesses where the primary motivation is to grow big and maximize revenues. This "bias toward big" extends to most resources that are available about creating a business plan, along with most other resources for creating and building an enterprise.

And yet this traditional quantitative approach just isn't appropriate for the types of small enterprises that comprise the backbone of the economy, much less the small-scale enterprises that weave a socially conscious mission into their intention for creating a viable, financially stable organization. The priorities of these enterprises are different from the traditional industrial model, so the approaches to such companies must also be modified. We've included several ideas, suggestions and resources below that may be helpful.

Whether you're just beginning or looking to revitalize, talking with people who have done similar things — either similar enterprises or "inspired vision" enterprises — is always a great idea. Many traditional "make money, grow big" business people don't understand the social-mission organization because it's about more than just making a quick buck. Mixing altruism with capitalism just doesn't make sense to such people, because they don't understand why someone would opt for such benevalence when it reduces your potential (financial) return on investment. But more and more people are making the decision to define return on investment differently — in both qualitative and quantitative terms.

Even with big-vision enterprises, though, it's very important to capture the vision, mission and action plan on paper, because it really helps you to organize your thoughts and identify resources, opportunities, potential challenges, and action priorities. While it can be a challenge to get it out of your head an on to paper, it's well worth the effort. Why? Because when you choose to run an inspired-vision enterprise, you have two challenges: putting your vision into action in a way that aligns rhetoric with results, and the more traditional challenge of running a smooth, efficient and financially stable business. This is true whether your organization is for-profit or non-profit.

Where do you start in creating your plan? Take your clue from traditional planning approaches, and modify it so that it reflects the full vision, mission, intention, and multiple-bottom-line interests of your big-vision enterprise.

A typical strategic or business plan includes:

• An overview of the organization's vision, mission and purpose (what you're about and what you're trying to do)

• An overview of the community or market in which you're operating (including culture, size of market, similar organizations and their primary markets or groups/people they serve)

• An overview of the opportunities for your organization (where are there gaps in the community or market in which you're operating, how can your organization meet those unmet needs or gaps, what can your organization offer that isn't already offered or where is there the overflow need that your organization helps meet)

• An overview of the challenges, hurdles, weaknesses or threats that you face in bringing your organization into the market (these could be financial, finding enough customers, saturation of the market with "too similar" organizations, etc.)

• An overview of potential resources, assets, ideas, approaches, etc. that might help you scale these challenges or hurdles, or get past the weaknesses, etc.

• An overview of assets and funding sources

• An overview of the key people involved to help launch and sustain your organization (brief summaries or resumes)

• Action Plan (including things you'll be doing in the next month, quarter and year to meet specific goals; includes market and outreach, as well as any key milestones in events or services or goals achieved, etc.)

We have several articles and tipsheets on Ivy Sea Online that might be helpful to you, in that they offer questions and exercises that may help you capture some of this on paper and lead you into a customized plan that suits your vision, lifestyle goals and intended contribution to the world. The links below can help get your started.

This article-series is inspired by content featured in the book Big Vision, Small Business: The Four Keys to Success and Satisfaction as a Lifestyle Entrepreneur (Ivy Sea Publishing, October 2001), by Jamie Walters. Want to know the keys, or purchase the book?

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