I’m in a season of planning. Business planning, sales planning, financial planning, career planning, wedding planning…. Went to a committee meeting at my church this week; yep, Worship Planning. My wife and business partner frequently discuss plans for planning all these things we plan for clients, family and friends.
Planning is critical to the success of your business and people trust us to help them plan well.
So what’s the Theory of Everything? The Theory of Everything, TOE, is a physics goal of finding a unifying theory that links all other physics principles under one umbrella. Sort of like a physics key to the universe. It’s enough for most of us to know that a lot of really smart people are working tirelessly to find the physics TOE so that we can stay focused on the key to our business success.
In planning your business, you need the Business Theory of Everything.
Connecting The Dots
The Business Theory of Everything, BTOE, is the principle that links all the various pieces and parts of your business into a cohesive, functional and healthy enterprise.
The very nature of a competitive business environment includes challenge and our response to challenge. So a business constant is challenge or resistance against our desired business outcomes.
A major challenge that business owners and leaders face is connecting all the dots. Everything is important but you just can’t seem to get your arms around “everything.” There’s always a loose end or two that keeps you from fulfilling your Mission; your Vision may feel more like a pipe dream.
“We are pushed hard from all sides. But we are not beaten down. We are bewildered. But that doesn’t make us lose hope.” 2 Cor 4:8
The struggles of trying to get our arms around “everything” and get the business going the way we want it to go can leave you feeling a little beaten down and bewildered. Frustration creeps in and affects our attitudes toward employees, partners, suppliers and even customers.
We are created to withstand pretty much any challenge where we see the end game. Tell me to run a mile; no problem. Tell me to run until you say stop and I may have a little concern after a mile or two of no end in sight. The dentist tells me he needs to drill on one of my teeth, no problem. The dentist pulls out the drill and says “relax, you’re gonna be here a while…” Do you think I’m relaxed?!? Bewildered, frustrated and moving toward beaten down are more likely.
“Our troubles are small. They last only for a short time. But they are earning for us a glory that will last forever. It is greater than all our troubles.” 2 Cor 4:17
The Apostle Paul is describing our spiritual walk with God and at the same time revealing our place in creation. We face relatively small problems in contrast with our eternal glory and we have an assuring Faith that we will overcome. Our physical life is of limited duration as are our physical trials. We can and should apply Paul’s teaching to our work life.
The Business Theory of Everything defined is – we are most successful when we are able to see our challenges as something we can overcome in a reasonable time frame.
The vast majority of our business challenges and obstacles have solutions that we can deploy with defined timelines. As long as we have a plan to overcome and understand the timeline for the plan, we maintain hope in our success.
It’s a simple concept but it’s often hard for business owners to climb out of the weeds long enough to look ahead, define problems and identify associated solutions.
Planning Your Business
Note the two step process that the Business Theory of Everything brings to your business planning.
Step One : we must properly identify the challenges we see.
Step Two : design effective and timely solutions to our challenges that move us forward.
“Seeing our challenges as something we can overcome and knowing when and how we plan to overcome those challenges” is like magic pixie dust on our ability to execute. While plan implementation and execution should be an integral part of devising solutions to our challenges, we must not let our current situation prevent us from hope in the future.
The problems we face in the whirlwind of our day to day business are what we come to know as how things are; it’s what we see. The future state of our good plans fully executed is what we must come to focus upon. Knowing what to do and why we’re doing it fuels good execution.
I have found the Business Theory of Everything to be consistently effective at generating business plans that deliver results and hope in fulfilling a long term business Vision.
“So we don’t spend all our time looking at what we can see. Instead, we look at what we can’t see. What can be seen lasts only a short time. But what can’t be seen will last forever.” 2 Cor 4:18
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