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Planning and Paradox

Business Planning, Plan-as-you-go Planning, Planning Fundamentals, , ,

Business planning is full of paradox. It’s a matter of balance. Here are some interesting examples.

  • Business plans are always wrong, but nonetheless vital. Wrong because they’re predicting the future and we’re human, we’re fallible, so we don’t get it right. Vital because we need the plan in order to track where, how, and what direction it was wrong, which becomes planning process, which becomes management. I deal with this a lot.
  • You have to focus to survive, but you need new markets to grow. So which is it? Have you heard of the corridor principal? It says business strategy is like walking down a long corridor full of doors. Open every door to investigate and you never get anywhere. Ignore all the doors to just keep going and you never get any new opportunities.
  • I’ve written before: “it’s better to have a mediocre strategy consistently applied over three or more years than a series of brilliant strategies, each applied for six months or so.” So do you stick to the plan regardless, like running into a brick wall? Or do you revise? When do you revise? How do you know? There’s paradox, where the human judgment comes in to override the formulaic.

The solution to that paradox is the frequent plan vs. actual review, tracking results and assumptions, to put changing the plan into a real context. Set the plan, review it, and revise it, frequently, based on needs. It’s still a tough decision, at times, because of the consistency vs. pivot problem; but keeping on top of it makes it easier. For more on that, check out Lean Business Plan as Business Dashboard and GPS.

(Image: shutterstock.com)

Lean Business Plan: Form Follows Function

Business Planning, Lean Business Plan, , ,

Your lean business plan is no more than what you need to run your business. In the beginning, it might be as simple as an elevator speech. Be able to talk through those key points: the customer story, what makes you unique, how you’re focusing and on what you’re focusing, and, if it comes to that, your close — what you want from whoever is listening. Form Follows Function

 

Or it might be a simple sales forecast, and perhaps, a burn rate in the very beginning because you know what you’re doing — maybe you’ve been doing it for years already and you don’t need to verbalize it right at this moment — and you’ll set those figures down and start tracking them.

Lean planning comes in many forms. Think of it as analogous to motion in athletics. In so many different sports, the winners practice economy of motion, repeated muscle memory. Another way to look at it: in design and mechanics, the fewer moving parts, the better. If you have to squint conceptually to see the key points, squint down on the elements you’ll be able to track and then revisit.

It’s not about the text, or the form of the thing, until that becomes related to the function. When you’re doing a business plan as part of a graduate business school class, then yes, it has to be complete and look good and read well; editing and format matter. When you’re doing a plan for an investment group that is going to pass it around among the partners, then it matters. But you don’t want to get bogged down in format when it’s just you and your spouse and you simply want to think through what’s required.

So the plan is a collection of concepts in the middle, surrounded by specifics that have to be done. The core of the plan is strategy and tactics, as simply as you can put them, just bullet points as reminders. Around the core you put a collection of milestones; numbers to be measured and tracked (lots of them are sales, expenses, and the like, but not all); task assignments and responsibilities for different people, dates and deadlines, budgets, and so on. That’s your plan.

From that core lean business plan, you spin off various outputs. You take the highest highlights of the plan and 60 seconds or so to explain it in an elevator speech. That’s one output. Or you write it all out carefully, and add supporting information about the market and the industry and the backgrounds of the management team, and it’s a plan document. Or you create a 20-minute 10-slide summary with PowerPoint or Keynote slides, and that’s a pitch presentation for potential investors. Or you create a cover letter or cover e-mail, about a page or so, along with a 5- to 10-page written summary, and that’s a summary memo. Or you do none of these, you simply keep that plan as a collection of bullet points, of picture financial projections, and a list of things to be done by whom and when and for how much money, and share it with your team. In that last case you don’t ever edit or polish it, or sweat the page headers and page footers or font size. You just use it to manage your company,

Notice that none of these outputs stands as something you do instead of the plan. And none of these outputs is really the plan. The plan exists at the core, and you create the outputs as needed.

With all of these various iterations and outputs, always keep assumptions on top, where you can see them for every review meeting. Minding the changing assumptions is one of the significant advantages of the plan-as-you-go approach over the more traditional methods.

I ran a business for years during which the plan was shared only between me and my wife, mostly, enhanced by sales forecasts and burn rate. During those formative years there was no need for anything else. When it was time for an elevator speech, either one of us could do it. When there was need for a written business plan — it came up first when we first set up the merchant account to be able to accept credit cards, in 1988 — then we settled down for a while and wrote it out as it was, conceptually, at that time. We always knew what we wanted to do, but we also knew our key assumptions, and we tracked them as they changed, and revised the plan. A lot of that was verbal, between two people.

As the business grew, the verbal plan with the forecast stopped working. Things became more complicated. Employees needed to know about the plan and join in its formation and then its implementation. So we moved it into bullet points on the computer, and tied those to forecasts, and began tracking in a group, in more detail.

We then began to do annual plans more formally, writing out chapters, and conducting review meetings every month. With each annual plan we’d go out and take a new fresh look at the market. We had people doing nothing but marketing, and they developed segmentations and forecasts and supporting information. It was part of their job.

Are you recognizing yourself somewhere along this line?

Eventually we wanted to bring in outside investment. That was during the dotcom boom when valuations were very high, so we thought it would be a good time to lock in the value with some cash out. We produced very formal plans every three months during that period.

The speech isn’t instead of the plan, and the pitch isn’t instead of the plan, but that doesn’t mean you plan or don’t plan if nobody outside your company is going to read about it. Your plan should always be there as the source of these outputs, so you’re ready to produce them when you need to.

Pop Quiz: Do You Know How to Start a Business Plan?

Business Planning, Management, , ,

People often ask me how to start a business plan. Sometimes I’ll say it depends on you, your preference, and your style, so some people do a sales forecast first, some do a vision statement. But the right answer is that you start by scheduling your monthly review and revise meeting. That’s by far the most important first step. For everybody.

Each year, as you get ready to publish the next year’s plan, schedule the plan review meetings. Use some regular meeting schedule such as the third or fourth Thursday of every month.  All the managers committed to the plan will know way ahead of time so there are few reasons to miss a meeting.

Some excuses will come up. There will be events like trade shows or client events that some managers have to attend. However, with a preplanned schedule for review meetings, these problems won’t happen that often.

If your planning process includes a good plan — with specific responsibilities assigned, managers committed, budgets, dates, and measurability — then the review meetings become easier to manage and easier to attend.  The agenda of each meeting should be predetermined by the milestones coming due soon, and milestones recently due.  Managers review and discuss plan vs. actual results, explain and analyze the differences.

At Palo Alto Software, we review coordinated milestones once a week, Tuesday mornings, in about 20 minutes.  The monthly plan vs. actual review includes financial results and other measurables — product milestones, support calls, sales events, etc. — and takes just two hours a month.

It doesn’t take that much time, but there is very little in management more valuable.  It makes your plan a planning process.

This is one of the core concepts of my Plan as you go business plan method. 

(Image: bigstockphoto.com page of the calendar) 

Planning: Form Follows Function

Business Planning, Plan-as-you-go Planning, , ,

(Rounding up my business planning theme this week, this is another excerpt from my book The Plan-As-You-Go Business Plan, which is posted complete online.)

Your plan-as-you-go business plan is no more than what you need to run your business. In the beginning, it might be as simple as an elevator speech. Be able to talk through those key points: the customer story, what makes you unique, how you’re focusing and on what you’re focusing, and, if it comes to that, your close — what you want from whoever is listening.

Or it might be a simple sales forecast, and perhaps, a burn rate in the very beginning because you know what you’re doing — maybe you’ve been doing it for years already and you don’t need to verbalize it right at this moment — and you’ll set those figures down and start tracking them

Planning comes in many forms. Think of it as analogous to motion in athletics. In so many different sports, the winners practice economy of motion, repeated muscle memory. Another way to look at it: in design and mechanics, the fewer moving parts, the better. If you have to squint conceptually to see the key points, squint down on the elements you’ll be able to track and then revisit.

It’s not about the text, or the form of the thing, until that becomes related to the function. When you’re doing a business plan as part of a graduate business school class, then yes, it has to be complete and look good and read well; editing and format matter. When you’re doing a plan for an investment group that is going to pass it around among the partners, then it matters. But you don’t want to get bogged down in format when it’s just you and your spouse and you simply want to think through what’s required.

So the plan is a collection of concepts in the middle, surrounded by specifics that have to be done. Around the core you put a collection of metrics to be measured and tracked (lots of them are sales, expenses, and the like, but not all), task assignments and responsibilities for different people, dates and deadlines, budgets, and so on. That’s your plan.

From that core plan, you spin off various outputs. You take the highest highlights of the plan and 60 seconds or so to explain it in an elevator speech. That’s one output. Or you write it all out carefully, and add supporting information about the market and the industry and the backgrounds of the management team, and it’s a plan document. Or you create a 20-minute 10-slide summary with PowerPoint or Keynote slides, and that’s a pitch presentation for potential investors. Or you create a cover letter or cover e-mail, about a page or so, along with a 5- to 10-page written summary, and that’s a summary memo. Or you do none of these, you simply keep that plan as a collection of bullet points, of picture financial projections, and a list of things to be done by whom and when and for how much money, and share it with your team. In that last case you don’t ever edit or polish it, or sweat the page headers and page footers or font size. You just use it to manage your company,

Notice that none of these outputs stands as something you do instead of the plan. And none of these outputs is really the plan. The plan exists at the core, and you create the outputs as needed.

With all of these various iterations and outputs, always keep assumptions on top, where you can see them for every review meeting. Minding the changing assumptions is one of the significant advantages of the plan-as-you-go approach over the more traditional methods.

I ran a business for years during which the plan was shared only between me and my wife, mostly, enhanced by sales forecasts and burn rate. During those formative years there was no need for anything else. When it was time for an elevator speech, either one of us could do it. When there was need for a written business plan — it came up first when we first set up the merchant account to be able to accept credit cards, in 1988 — then we settled down for a while and wrote it out as it was, conceptually, at that time. We always knew what we wanted to do, but we also knew our key assumptions, and we tracked them as they changed, and revised the plan. A lot of that was verbal, between two people.

As the business grew, the verbal plan with the forecast stopped working. Things became more complicated. Employees needed to know about the plan and join in its formation and then its implementation. So we moved it into bullet points on the computer, and tied those to forecasts, and began tracking in a group, in more detail.

We then began to do annual plans more formally, writing out chapters, and conducting review meetings every month. With each annual plan we’d go out and take a new fresh look at the market. We had people doing nothing but marketing, and they developed segmentations and forecasts and supporting information. It was part of their job.

Are you recognizing yourself somewhere along this line?

Eventually we wanted to bring in outside investment. That was during the dotcom boom when valuations were very high, so we thought it would be a good time to lock in the value with some cash out. We produced very formal plans every three months during that period.

The speech isn’t instead of the plan, and the pitch isn’t instead of the plan, but that doesn’t mean you plan or don’t plan if nobody outside your company is going to read about it. Your plan should always be there as the source of these outputs, so you’re ready to produce them when you need to.

Planning: It’s About Management and Accountability

Back to Fundamentals, Business Planning, Plan-as-you-go Planning, ,

(Note: this is an excerpt from my book The Plan-As-You-Go Business Plan, which is posted as a web site where you can read it online.)

Every small-business owner suffers the problem of management and accountability. It’s much easier to be friends with the people you work with than to manage them well.

Correct management means setting expectations well and then following up on results. Compare results with expectations. People on a team are held accountable only if management actually does the work of tracking results and communicating results, after the fact, to the people responsible.

Metrics are part of the problem. As a rule we don’t develop the right metrics for people. Metrics aren’t right unless the people responsible understand them and believe in them. Will the measurement scheme show good performances and bad performances?

The metrics should be built into the plan. Remember, people need metrics. People want metrics.

Then you have to track. That’s where the plan-as-you-go business plan creates a management advantage, because tracking and following up is part of its most important pieces. Set the review schedules in advance, make sure you have the right participants for the review, and then do it.

In good teams, the negative feedback is in the metric. Nobody has to scold or lecture, because the team participated in generating the plan and the team reviews it, and good performances make people proud and happy, and bad performances make people embarrassed. It happens automatically. It’s part of the planning process.

And you must avoid the crystal ball and chain. Sometimes — actually, often — metrics go sour because assumptions have changed. Unforeseen events happened. You manage these times collaboratively, separating the effort from the results. People on your team see that and they believe in the process, and they’ll continue to contribute.

Planning and Paradox

Business Planning, Plan-as-you-go Planning, Planning Fundamentals, , ,

Business planning is full of paradox. It’s a matter of balance. Here are some interesting examples.

  • Business plans are always wrong, but nonetheless vital. Wrong because they’re predicting the future and we’re human, we’re fallible, so we don’t get it right. Vital because we need the plan in order to track where, how, and what direction it was wrong, which becomes planning process, which becomes management. I deal with this a lot. 
  • You have to focus to survive, but you need new markets to grow. So which is it? Have you heard of the corridor principal? It says business strategy is like walking down a long corridor full of doors. Open every door to investigate and you never get anywhere. Ignore all the doors to just keep going and you never get any new opportunities.
  • I’ve wrote in my Plan as you Go Business Plan book: “it’s better to have a mediocre strategy consistently applied over three or more years than a series of brilliant strategies, each applied for six months or so.” So do you stick to the plan regardless, like running into a brick wall? Or do you revise? When do you revise? How do you know? There’s paradox, where the human judgment comes in to override the formulaic.

(Image: shutterstock.com)

Business Plans are Always Wrong, But Still Vital

Back to Fundamentals, Management,

(Note: It feels like business planning season to me. Fall, or almost fall, time to think about next year. So I’m reviewing business planning fundamentals, this week and next, refreshing some of my older posts.) 

Business plans are always wrong. That’s because we’re human. Business plans predict the future. We humans suck at predicting the future.

Istock_000000549056small_2

Paradox: nonetheless, planning is vital. Planning means starting with the plan and then tracking, reviewing progress, watching plan vs. actual results, correcting the course without losing sight of the long-term destination.

Planning is a process, like walking or steering, that involves constant corrections.

  • The plan sets a marker. Without it we can’t track how we were wrong, in what direction, and when, and with what assumptions.
  • Use this marker to manage the constant conflict between short-term problems and long-term goals. You don’t just implement a plan, no matter what. You work that plan. Use it to maintain your vision of progress towards the horizon, while dealing with the everyday problems, putting out fires.
  • So the plan may be wrong, but the planning process is vital.

The truth is that forecasting is hard. Nobody likes forecasting. But Istock_000000408066smallone thing harder than forecasting is trying to run a business without a forecast. Plan, connect dots, identify interdependencies, set numerical goals. Then track results, review, and revise. 

A business plan is normally full of holes, but you fill them, after the fact, with the management that follows. That’s what turns planning into management. 

Good planning is nine parts implementation for every one part strategy.

(Images: shutterstock.com)

10 Tips For Starting a Service Business

Starting a Business, , , , , ,

You can see the request here on the right, posted to me on Twitter. I decided it’s a good subject for a blog post here, and I went on my own first as a service business and survived that way for 12 years before Palo Alto Software finally established itself as a product company.  So I do have some tips I can share.

  1. Set your goals right and define success well. Service businesses generally take less start-up capital but are also much less likely than product businesses to offer eventual leverage and scalability. There are exceptions, but in most service businesses the assets walk out the door every night. Those businesses are relatively easy to start, relatively easy to survive and prosper with, but also hard to grow beyond small, hard to sell, and hard to attract outside investors.
  2. Look for a business anchor. That’s a former employer and/or a strong client.  For example, I had Apple Computer, a former client, and Creative Strategies, a former employer, both willing to contract my services from the beginning. Apple remained critical to – and loyal to – my business services from the beginning in 1984 until Business Plan Pro changed the business to product-driven in 1994.
  3. Understand your first client is twice as hard to get as your second. And the second is a third harder than the third. Land those first few clients well. Make sure they’re happy. Give them a huge discount to get the relationship going, and expect to keep your rates low for them, but ask them, in return, to not tell strangers what they pay you. Work free if you have to. You need references and testimonials.
  4. Find a focus. Be different from anybody offering similar services to similar clients, in a way they can understand immediately and will share with others. Example: I was a business plan consultant who had a fancy MBA degree, no big deal; but I had also built my first computer, programmed extensively, lived in Latin America, and spoke fluent Spanish. My clients tended to be high-tech companies doing international business.
  5. Use social media and blogging and your website as your main tools for marketing. Create and share content that validates your expertise. Your marketing today is so much easier than it was when I went out on my own; where I had to get through editors and publishers and conference organizers to get my expertise in front of clients (specifically, I wrote magazine articles, and books, and I spoke at COMDEX and the like), you can do it yourself by posting on blogs and Twitter and Facebook and LinkedIn. And, soon, RebelMouse. Oh, and that reminds me: Read Duct Tape Marketing, by John Jantsch.
  6. Spend wisely on your logo and look and feel. Look into 99Designs, I’ve seen some sensational work from them. A professional look to your logo and website (or Twitter or Facebook or LinkedIn profile, if that’s all you do for a website) is really important. It isn’t a matter of business cards or stationery anymore, but it is how you represent yourself.
  7. Don’t ever spend money you don’t have. You’ll get lots of suggestions for ways you can spend money now to make money later; mail lists, marketing programs, they never stop.
  8. Don’t ever lose a client. Repeat business is vital. Keeping your existing clients is way cheaper and easier than finding new ones. Always go that extra mile, when you have to, to keep your existing clients happy.
  9. Know your numbers. If you don’t know the difference between sales and money in the bank, between profits and cash, learn it. It’s vital. Know your numbers like the back of your hand.
  10. Never compromise integrity. You’re going to succeed or fail based on your reputation. Don’t cut corners with credibility.
  11. (Bonus point) Expect to make mistakes. If you can’t acknowledge and learn from and apologize for your mistakes, then you’re doomed. You will make them. If you think you won’t, keep your day job.
  12. (Second bonus point) Do your own simple, practical business plan. Do it for yourself, not outsiders. Make it just big enough. Keep it fluid and flexible and review it often and revise it frequently. Read The Plan-as-you-go Business Plan, by me. Sign up for www.liveplan.com. [Disclosure: I’m the author of that book (but I’m linking you to where you can read it free) and I own Palo Alto Software, which publishes liveplan, a web app for business planning.]

Time For a New Kind of Business Planning

Business Planning, ,

[Note: this is a special post placed here as part of Pamela Slim’s Escape Community. It was modified from a post that originally appeared here.]

It is time to adapt a new kind of business planning, which I want to call “plan-as-you-go” business planning. It leaves the formal plan document for the special cases that really need it, while focusing for the rest of us on the real power of planning, meaning management and tracking and accountability, and easing up on the form to make sure that form follows function. For convenience, let’s call it PAYG. The plan-as-you-go business plan is PAYG planning.

What’s Different About It?

How is the PAYG plan different from the standard business plan? Good question. Let’s get into some specifics:

1. It’s a process, not just a plan. Every PAYG plan has a review schedule built in, from the beginning. It sets the dates and participants in the future review meetings, taking 60-90 minutes once a month and 2-3 hours once per quarter.  and PAYG planning is about process: not just the plan, but the regular review and management of the plan.

2. Form follows function. The PAYG plan is not necessarily the same kind of formal business plan document you did in business school or read about all over. It doesn’t necessarily follow a recipe. Every PAYG plan is unique. It might generate a formal document at some point, or over and over again actually at different points in company history, but until you need the formal plan document to show somebody it lives on your computer. You pull from the plan to make a pitch presentation or elevator speech or summary memo or full detailed business plan document, as required for business purpose. It’s the source of all of these, the key thinking including strategy and metrics and dates and deadlines, without having a specifically defined form.

3. It assumes and manages change. The PAYG plan is about navigation, not just a static map. It assumes that assumptions will change. That’s why it builds the review schedule into it, and in keeping with that idea, assumptions must always be visible, on top, where they can be reviewed. Unlike the misunderstood formal business plan, the PAYG plan is a way to keep your view of the long term goals and directions while also managing the short-term surprises.

Now I recognize that you could read this list and say “but that’s the same as good planning has been for years, it’s not so new and different.” And I’d say “that’s right, you’re getting it.” What’s most important about PAYG planning is that people in the real world, startups and growing companies alike, can actually use it. It gets people out of the silly talk about how a business plan isn’t useful because they misunderstand how a business plan is supposed to be used.

4. Accountability. Plan-as-you-go planning develops accountability in the process, as a matter of metrics, and tracking. It is important that accountability be a matter of collaboration, and not the crystal ball and chain.

What’s Essential

1. Start with the review schedule. If you don’t have a plan review schedule, you don’t have PAYG planning. You might have a plan, but it’s not PAYG planning. Set the dates from the very beginning. As you develop the plan, you keep the people involved aware of the touch points, when and how and who you’re going to track.

2. Develop useful metrics. PAYG planning is about actually managing, not just planning into thin air. The main metrics are money, and the most important is cash flow, but look for metrics that involve the team. Calls, presentations, visitors, inquiries, average time of calls, downloads, whatever. Ideally, everybody on the team deserves metrics.

3. Identify the assumptions. Effective PAYG planning keeps the assumptions on top, where you can revisit them with every review meeting. We assume things change and the planning is about navigation, not just a static map. This is how you keep your plan alive and active.

4. Every plan has a heart and flesh and bones. The heart is strategy, market need, differentiation, and focus. This is as true with PAYG planning as with traditional plans. The flesh and bones are just as important, and in PAYG planning that’s metrics, milestones, tasks, dates, deadlines, and responsibility assignments, and, most important, cash flow planning.

Important Principles of PAYG Planning

1. Start anywhere. Get going. The plan is a matter of interlocking blocks, so some people start with a numbers task, like a sales forecast, and others start conceptually, with a vision or a strategy or focus. Just get started. Don’t wait until your plan is finished, get going. Start today and start using it tomorrow.

2. All business plans are wrong – but still vital. It’s a matter of humanity, you are predicting the future, you’ll be wrong, but you set down tracks so you can follow up and revise without losing sight of the long-term goals and directions.

3. Good business plans are never done. My company’s business plan started in the late 1980s and it’s still a work in progress. If your plan is finished, your company is finished. Instead, you revise as needed, as in steering, navigation, and walking. The core of the plan is the collection of heart and flesh and bones, it’s content, thinking, and specifics; from that you spin out a document or presentation or elevator speech as needed, and when needed.

4. Form follows function. Do only as much as you need to run your company, to manage, to build strategy and follow-up and long-term goals and directions. If you don’t need to create a formal plan, don’t; keep it on your computer.

5. Keep it alive, always, and spin the output as needed. Don’t ever let your plan go static. Keep it on top of things, active, and alive, not forgotten in a drawer.

6. Planning is worth the implementation it causes. You measure a plan by results. It’s as good as the decisions it guides.

(Image: Velychko/Shutterstock)

The 3 Most Often Overlooked Pieces of the Business Plan

Business Planning, ,

Yes, it is true that plans are stories and stories drive plans, but that’s not stories as visions of the future and plans as managing and steering to make those visions true; we’re not talking about fairy tales. Make your planning real. Make it help your business. Make it help you control your destiny and manage better.

I believe in the just-big-enough business plan, where form follows function, and you plan as you go. Don’t include what you don’t need. For example, if you don’t have business reasons to describe your company and your management team to outsiders, then don’t bother with those descriptions as part of your plan. Don’t write to yourself what you already know and won’t use.

With that in mind, there are some things that should be in every business plan, no matter what.

1. The review schedule.

If you don’t take an hour or two to review the actual results and compare them to the plan, then you’re not really planning your business. You’ve let it become a one-time exercise, to create a document, instead of planning as steering and managing your company. Set aside a regular time – in my company it’s been the third Thursday or the month for years – to review the plan. If you don’t add this into the planning from the beginning, people will be tempted to think of it as a one-time document. That was a fairy tale.

2. The sales forecast.

It’s hard not to write the cash flow here, because cash isn’t profits, and cash is the single most important resource in business. But what I’ve found is that while business-to-business and product-driven businesses desperately need to project cash flow in advance (because of not getting paid in cash, and having to generate inventory), all businesses need to project sales because the plan vs. actual impact of sales is the key to ongoing management in changing times. Your costs and expenses pivot on sales.

Yes, you should have cash flow; but in the day to day, the sales levels drive management activity. But only if you have that regular review.

3. Concrete specific steps, milestones, and lookout points.

Blue-sky strategy is nice, it can be an invigorating intellectual exercise, but the measurable specifics are what drives business management. Every element of the business plan should have some way to see later whether or not it’s been implemented.

Go from vision and strategy to the steps to make it happen. What will it take?

From there, you develop milestones: dates, deadlines, and budgets, always with specific responsibility assignments. You want something you can track later so you can have the benefit of management of plan vs. actual results. Did things happen on time? Why, or why not?

And when I say lookout points, I mean things to watch, built into the plan, to alert you to progress, or lack of it. For example, did the site get released, and if so, is the traffic coming as projected? Did the restaurant open, and are we getting the business we’d hoped for? Plan for those key moments when you look for metrics to see whether or not you need to change assumptions. It’s like those stairway landings, halfway up the stairs, that you can use to put the box you’re carrying down and reassess.