OMB: Symptom of Business Sickness

Is your business haunted by the blinding ghosts that worked in another era?
The wealthiest man in Japan, Tadashi Yanai, has a business plan that looks
300 years into the future, but allows for annual updates as a matter of
course. To date, hes worth more than $6 billion.
This testament to making what is unseen visible begs the question: why
arent others planning and building according to plan?
Does your business have a real plan that gets updated each year? Hearsay
speculates that less than 10% of all businesses are managed according to a
plan that is more comprehensive than an annual set of target numbers. This
is a problem.
Yet, we are all rich beyond our wildest imaginings: each human is endowed
with 18 million brain cells. Most people and most businesses do not perform
the necessary processes to attune this innate gift to their personal or
business advantage.
It is a visionary act to craft a plan and it takes supreme discipline to review it
each year. Vision and discipline together provide the courage to endure and
keep working toward success despite setbacks and obstacles.
Many of the companies suffer from a lack of vision and discipline. As a result
they are not growing. Here are several red flags:

1. We dont have a five year plan. We dont have a five month plan.
2. Our revenue line has been the same for the past five years.
3. Our industry is all me-too, so we just copy whats hot and get a little
piece of that trend.
It doesnt matter if it is a manufacturing company, an importing concern, a
logistics firm, or a software business. This lack of vision relegates these
businesses to react to the market. Instead of defining a new paradigm for
their industries, they choose to wither, lose market share, and move further
away from a leading position.
Even worse, without a plan companies make decisions based on what worked
a decade or two decades ago, even though the rest of the world has moved
on. OBM is a ghost that not only haunts businesses that do not have the
discipline to revise a strategic plan each year. OBM also depletes ingenuity
and vigor of a firm, keeping its head blindly in the past. OBM means Old
Business Model.
You can spot OBMs everywhere. It looks like the call center business whose
customers have stated that they prefer email to phone calls, but metrics keep

employees working the phones and alienating customers. Every business has
to shed some aspects of its OBMs to stay present and add value to their client
base.
Mister Yanai doesnt need to worry about OBMs because he has both a plan
and vision that keep him focused, humble, and growing. He has the certainty
of a plan and the agility of adapting the plan each year. Yanai stays upbeat,
takes ups and downs in stride. He claims, I might look successful but Ive
made many mistakes. People take themselves too seriously. You have to be
positive and believe you will find success next time.