Devoted to Managers and those that seek to improve their management skills

Being one that always likes to look at things as they really are, and not how I wished they could be, it made me contemplate managers or business owners that write business plans that include "worst case scenario."

Jeff Cornwall wrote about this recently on his excellent blog: The Entrepreneurial Mind.

He says:
 
"When I see worst cases presented in most business plans, they are almost always not the worst case scenario. They are most often a less optimistic variation of what the entrepreneur thinks will actually happen. The real worst case should be this: if things don't go as planned and the deal fails, what is the outcome for investors and lenders?"

I have found this to be true in my own experience as well. People just water down their best case scenario a little and fail to look at the possibility that things may not work out at all.

Do you want to know a great way to overcome that temptation? Write your business plan as if you are going to present it to a banker. Then go to the banker to present it for a loan. I guarantee you that whatever shortcomings that are in the things that could possibly go wrong, the banker will find.

Ask what you would need to shore it up and make it more realistic and specific. It will give you a healthy dose of reality on the forces you face out there in the real world.

Whether in business or managing a department, failure can be real. To pretend the possibility doesn't exist or fail to prepare for it is just not a wise way to look at it.

It helps you to look at things that go wrong in a way that makes you realize that it's not the end of the world, business or department; but encourages you to keep on moving in spite of the temporary setback. To not be prepared causes many good leaders to crash and never recover.