4i Newsletter Masthead 480

A new plan.

Four i 480 ANewPlan

The vast majority of businesses are being run to a plan first designed by Pierre Samuel du Pont de Nemours in 1799. To be fair, it was highly effective then, leading to the creation of the DuPont company – but would it work as well today?

In 1992, Peter Drucker, regarded by many as the all-time authority on business management, wrote in the Wall Street Journal:

“Uncertainty—in the economy, society, politics—has become so great as to render futile, if not counterproductive, the kind of planning most companies still practice: forecasting based on probabilities.”

I wonder what he would have to say today on the subject, given that little has changed in the three decades since?

So let me ask you a question: To what extent, if you removed the date and numbers from your business plans of last year, three, five or ten years ago, would they be materially different from your current one?

My bet is that your old plans aren’t working well enough – in which case it’s time for a new approach.

We’ve invested a lot of time, energy and a fair amount of cash too, researching different approaches to business planning, and conclude that all of them are flawed, in one way or another, but some are useful, and a few can really help drive profitable growth.

Based on this study, we’ve created the Estate Agency MasterPlan, and will be sharing it for the first time at five exclusive invitation only events in June:

Tuesday, 13 June – InterContinental The George, Edinburgh
Wednesday, 14 June – Aspire, Leeds
Thursday, 15 June – Silverstone Circuit, Northampton
Wednesday, 21 June – Coldra Court Hotel, Celtic Manor, Cardiff
Thursday, 22 June – Hilton at the Aegeas Bowl, Southampton

Thanks to the generous support of our Principal Partner OnTheMarket, and sponsors ASAP, Chapter II, Coadjute, Landmark, Moneypenny, Rexlabs, Spectre, Street and Twenty EA, these events are free to attend so look out for your invitation and register ASAP. (Please note that there’s just 100 spaces at each venue and at the time of writing, 420 have been reserved).


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