In ancient China, a general about to go to war was given a temple.
According to Chang Yu, one of the old commentators on Sun Tzu, the temple was set apart so the general could work out his plan of campaign. All of it happened before anyone marched anywhere. That’s the room Sun Tzu has in mind here:
Now the general who wins a battle makes many calculations in his temple ere the battle is fought. The general who loses a battle makes but few calculations beforehand. Thus do many calculations lead to victory, and few calculations to defeat: how much more no calculation at all!
Sun Tzu, The Art of War, Chapter I, Laying Plans, translated by Lionel Giles (1910)
Look at that last line again: how much more no calculation at all.
The most powerful part of planning happens before the plan exists. It’s the thought and the time you put in, the questions you ask yourself, and the process of working through different scenarios, brainstorming and preparing. The document at the end is a record of all that thinking.
The question that ends the pitch
There’s a saying in business that’s almost a cliché: “If you don’t know your numbers, you don’t know your business.”
Watch Dragons’ Den or Shark Tank and you’ll see it play out. Every so often an entrepreneur walks in and all the dragons think they’re incredible. They love the business idea. Then they ask about the numbers, and the entrepreneur doesn’t know them.
Did they ever get the investment? I’ve not seen that happen.
The sums for numbers that haven’t happened yet
Knowing your past numbers is one thing. Knowing the future ones is where the calculations in the temple come in. Say your plan is to grow the business by 100%. Brilliant, but how many more people does that need? And what about premises, materials, plant and equipment?
Before your next big decision, sit down and work through these four:
- The cash. How much cash do you need to deliver the plans you’ve got?
- The resources. What else needs to be in place: people, premises, materials, plant, equipment?
- The risks. What could go wrong, and how would you avoid it or soften the blow?
- The tracking. How will you know you’re on target and moving forward the way you think you are? And how close were your last forecasts to what actually happened?
That last question is the easy one to skip. If last year’s forecast was miles out, you want to know before you bet on this year’s.
You don’t need every answer
I’m not saying you have to have every single thing figured out before you move. The more you’ve thought it through, though, and the more you’ve thought about the potential risks and how you’d deal with them, the easier it gets.
Sun Tzu’s generals had a temple for this. A quiet hour with a spreadsheet will do the same job. Maybe it’s time you booked one in before you commit to anything big, and started with the cash. Sun Tzu has plenty more to say about getting ready before the fight, and I wrote about staying ready for it.
