I noticed this very plan-as-you-go post by Guy Kawasaki on the American Express Open Forum. What I like about it, particularly, is where Guy says “set goals” and then lists these four desirable qualities of goals:

Measurable. If a goal isn’t measurable, its unlikely you’ll achieve it. For a startup, quantifiable goals are things like shipping deadlines, downloads, and sales volume. The old line “What gets measured gets done” is true. This also has ramifications for the number of goals, because you can’t (and shouldn’t) measure everything. Three to five goals measured on a weekly basis are plenty.

Achievable. Take your conservative forecasts for these goals and multiply them by 10 percent; then use that as your goal. For example, if you think you’ll easily sell a million units in the first year, set your goal at 100,000 units. There is nothing more demoralizing than setting a conservative goal and falling short; instead take 10 percent of your forecast, make this your goal, and blow it away. You might think that such a practice will lead to underachieving organizations, because they aren’t being challenged. Yeah, well, check back with me after you don’t sell a million widgets.

Relevant. A good goal is relevant. If you’re a software company, it’s the number of downloads of your demo version. It’s not your ranking in Alexa, so telling the company to focus on getting into the top 50,000 sites in the world in terms of traffic is not nearly as relevant as 10,000 downloads per month.

Rathole resistant. A goal can be measurable, achievable, and relevant and still send you down a rathole. Let’s say you’ve created a content website. Your measurable, achievable, and relevant goal is to sign up 100,000 registered users in the first ninety days. So far, so good. But what if you focus on this body count without regard to the stickiness of the site? So now you’ve gotten 100,000 people to register, but they visit once and never return. That’s a rathole. Ensure that your goal encompasses all the factors that will make your organization viable.

What I like about this, as you might guess, is that it’s a very close match to what I’m saying here, in this site, and in the Plan-As You-Go Business Plan book itself. Goals are about business, getting things done, and they do you no good unless you follow up on results and manage accordingly.

OPEN Forum by American Express OPEN | The Art of Execution

(Note: reposted here with permission from Entrepreneur.com, where it first appeared, as one of my columns in the Business Plan coaching area. Since it’s so closely related to the plan-as-you-go approach, I’m reposting it here. Tim.)

Plans are wrong, but nonetheless vital. There’s a paradox for you. It’s a simple statement, one that I hope is somewhat surprising coming from a business planning expert; but it’s still very important. And it gets right to the heart of what business planning is all about.

More than ever, those who plan look to projections that often miss the mark. Nobody I know, and in fact nobody I’ve even heard about, accurately predicted the sharp plunge in the economy last fall. So of course those who actually use a business planning process are implementing a lot of course corrections, reviews and revisions.

It’s a great example of how this paradoxical statement — plans are wrong, but nonetheless vital — makes sense. As we look at the year to come, most of us are dialing down our forecasts. Does that mean we wasted our time making them? Not at all. How do we even make sense of where we are if we don’t have a map that shows us how we got there?

If you had a plan earlier this year and results differed greatly from what was expected, I hope you’re taking the time to compare those results, in detail, to the earlier plan. Look for where the differences were greatest. Look for where expenses were tied to sales. Look for the bright spots where sales held up. Look for how the numbers were supposed to come together, and not just how they didn’t.

And if you didn’t have a plan, then think of this as a good time to get a planning process started so you have a better view of your business in the future. Start making simple sales and expense projections. Don’t worry that they’re wrong; just make sure you go back each month and plot where and how and in which direction they were wrong so you can correct them.

You should only be wrong a month at a time, and as you use that plan-vs.-results analysis to look more closely at how things are going, you adjust again and improve results for the next time around. With each month, your grasp on reality gets better.

And then, as things go back up — and they will — you’ll be able to use what you learned to see the signs, anticipate and act accordingly.

This kind of planning process is what’s meant by the phrase, “The plan may be wrong, but planning is essential.” Then there’s another old military saying: “No battle plan ever survived the first encounter with the enemy.” What does happen, though, with battle plans as well as business plans, is you don’t know how to recover or how to adjust the plan if you didn’t have a plan in the first place.

The book is Slide:ology, and this five-minute video on bnet (a Harvard Business School site) is a great summary.

If you can’t get the video off of this site, click here for the source video on bnet.

Here’s a great resource for you, or a collection of resources, as you think through the marketing, identity, and focus factors that make up the heart of your plan.

It’s almost too big, but at least it’s divided into subsections, and it’s a great list. Thanks to Spotlight ID for this list of 250 top blog posts on advertising, marketing, media, and PR.

I got the tip on that list from Seth Godin’s blog post of last week, which started with that list, and then highlighted his top 20 favorites from his blog. He’s a clear winner in the top 250, and for good reason. You’ll find him referenced frequently in the plan-as-you-go approach (this site, and the book).

Add Duct Tape Marketing to that list (because I’ve referenced that in this site and the book too) and you have a lot of really good food for thought about your core marketing strategy.

I’ve just finished a 12-minute online video (presentation, slides, with me talking) summary of Chapter 2, Attitude Adjustment. Click here for that … it does require Flash Player and Java on your system, and the window has to be about 860 pixels wide to show the whole thing.

I’ve finished a nine-minute video showing you how to download and install the free add-on, available on this site (in the resources tab), to implement a default plan-as-you-go business plan outline as an add-on to Business Plan Pro.

If for any reason you don’t see the video here then you can click here for the youtube version of the same thing.

This video shows you how to download the add-on, install it into Business Plan Pro, and then use it to create a plan-as-you-go plan. Then it shows you a bit about how to use that customized outline within the software.

And, just as a reminder, there’s also this video showing you how to just still with the standard default Business Plan Pro, and also use the plan-as-you-go approach. And for that first one as well there’s a youtube alternative in case the flash player doesn’t work for you.

This is a twelve minute slide presentation summarizing the key points in Chapter 2, ‘Attitude Adjustment.’

If for any reason you don’t see the youtube video player in this post, you can also click here to go to the source on youtube directly.

Where’s my discussion of the secret sauce? Chelle Parmele from the BIG (business in general) blog asked me that a couple days ago, expecting it to be in this book. I was embarrassed. I talk about the secret sauce a lot, in my seminars and in my class, at the office. It’s definitively another view of the same reality I’m calling the heart of the plan. So that’s one thing to add for the next edition.

The secret sauce is the magic, also called (boring) differentiators, and sometimes competitive edge; Guy Kawasaki calls it “underlying magic” and recommends that it be one of the 10 (or so) slides is a pitch presentation. You can google it and see how people are writing about it, using it to define what’s new or different about some businesses. (You’ll also see some items on McDonalds’ secret sauce for the big mac, and some cooking stuff, but you’ll see what I mean).

This idea of the secret sauce is a good way to explain how you’re different from your competitors. What sets you apart?

Examples? Apple Computer’s secret sauce is design, for example. Michelin tires’ branding tries (in my opinion) to emulate Volve, the safety angle. My favorite restaurant in Eugene, Poppi’s Anatolia, has an extremely spicy version of vindaloo chicken. Whole Foods’ secret sauce is its having established the brand for healthy and organic foods. In cars, just look at the mini-cooper or the Honda Element or the Toyota Prius and you see secret sauce immediately.

This is a flash video, set for 800×600 dimensions, which will require that you install Flash on your system if you don’t already have it. just click this link … Planning as you go with Business Plan Pro … it should open up a new window with a media player showing, and an obvious arrow to click.

The source file was set up at 800 x 600 resolution, so you might want to resize the window to show the resolution at its best. If the window you use to watch this is too big, then it looks fuzzy.

And here, below, is a flash player version of the same thing (I hope) …

If this doesn’t work for you, it might be a matter of Internet band width or compatibility with flash. I’d like to know, so leave me a comment and I’ll get back to you.