Week 12 Reading Reflection

In this week's reading we talked about planning within an organization and why formal planning is important for a company's success. Starting companies may chose to start with informal planning because it suits the start-up company's structure better. Formal planning on the other hand can help companies understand better their mission, their advantages/disadvantages, their opportunities/threats, their competitors, and organize their goals accordingly. With this tool the company can grow in a more coherent way.

Formal company has obviously a lot of benefits to offer a company. But why are so many entrepreneurs lacking this type of planning? They say it is time consuming and time is scarce in their every day operating schedules, I believe that it is essential to set a specific time in the day or in the week for all the compartments of a company to meet and discuss their progress and their goals just so that every compartment is aware of what is going on in the other parts of the company. In other words, for all the sections to be on the same page. Appropriate time distribution to every task is essential. If you spend more time in a task that has minimal value for the company then you don't understand the company's goals.

Lack of expertise is also mentioned as a reason why entrepreneurs avoid formal planning. I didn't know that you have to be an expert to do formal planning. Lack of experience it may be, but it is something that you need to practice to know well, which also takes time. The author also says that entrepreneurs are typically generalists which I also don't understand.

Many of these entrepreneurs are also insecure that if they make a plan about their companies that involves the participation/decisions of others in the company besides themselves it will not go well. They only trust their own decisions and they are afraid of having others be in charge. I would guess these kind of entrepreneurs don't even take risks for their own ventures. I believe that in order to have a successful venture, you actually decide to sacrifice piece of your creation to others that know better about things you have little knowledge about.

Lastly, many entrepreneurs think that it is costly to invest into planning. I don't agree that that is a problem. I think in order not to lose business, you can have something that will make your business stronger and that will eventually bring you more money than you expected. Planning is my opinion may be costly but is also profitable and worth the try.