A simple business plan is all you need to keep your company moving along the success track.

Ask many entrepreneurs if they have a strategic/business plan/blueprint and they will nearly always say yes, but ask to see it and you’ll discover that it is often just a mental vision they have in their heads.

Writing a strategic blueprint is one of the single most important things that any company owner can do and yet, many small business owners never get around to doing it! Yes, they may have a dream for what they hope to achieve with their company but unless it is written down with goals, strategies and a plan of action, it’s really just a pipedream.

Planning is a critical part of ‘working on rather than in the business’. Many people with an entrepreneurial mindset have read the E-Myth by Michael Gerber and they are aware of the need to do this but still, there is resistance to doing it.

This may be because the typical entrepreneur is full of ideas and loves putting them in to action. Planning and strategizing is seen as boring or simply overwhelming. Where do you start when you’ve got such a huge vision for your burgeoning enterprise?

Sometimes the resistance to planning can be a plain old time management issue – it’s far more exciting to respond to urgent emails and phone calls, to solve problems on the shop floor and chat to important customers than to sit in the back office writing down goals. But allowing your ego to be puffed up by these urgent things rather than focusing on what’s really important can be to the detriment of your company.

Any business coach, advisor, banker or accountant will tell you that a plan is critical to your success.

A strategic blueprint gives you a sense of direction even when you’re immersed in the daily grind of running a company. It also allows you to make better decisions and, very importantly, it gives you peace of mind knowing what you need to do each day.

Any plan is better than nothing. It is better to have something written down on a piece of paper and stuck on your office wall than nothing at all.

Many of the templates on the Internet are long and complicated – but unless you are applying for finance they don’t need to be. A short simple business plan, of one page, that you actually use and refer to is far more valuable than a huge document that collects dust.