home » Engineer your own soft landing? The nonlinear business plan

Engineer your own soft landing? The nonlinear business plan

by Paula | 17 October 2008 | permalink | comments
Tags: business planning,
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This is an unformed idea I’ve been toying with for a little while. It originates from a disconnect I’ve long observed in the various existing relocalization agendas, which seem to be preparing for an “after” without recognizing that between now and “after” comes a process, potentially a rather lengthy one. Losing our homes and our jobs is a much bigger problem in the immediate than losing the entire electrical grid. What exactly are we to do between now and the day when flint knapping is actually necessary? Hang out in the park?

I personally am not content to spend the next 10-20 or more years waiting around for the low-tech renaissance while everything falls to shit. I intend to adapt and maneuver and evolve my way through — even to thrive — and my business will be the vehicle that makes such a thing possible. As I see it, the trick will be to have a range of options laid out in advance so I can adapt as quickly as possible. Of course, it’s impossible to plan for every single last contingency, but having a half-dozen or so options on hand means any one of them can be adapted much more rapidly than if adaptation had to occur completely on the fly.

So I cobbled together some insights primarily from three sources: Catherine Austin Fitts’ Navigate the Falling Dollar lecture; Seth Godin’s little book All Marketers are Liars; and a memory from childhood in my elementary school’s library.

From Fitts: scenario planning

In her lecture, Fitts introduces the audience to the concept of scenario planning. This entails identifying the future scenarios most likely to play out and developing a strategy for each.

From Godin: the narrative

Godin observes that all marketers are not really liars (the point is debatable, but I’ll let it go for the moment), they are storytellers. That is, the marketer’s job is to construct a narrative about the product, service, or brand he’s trying to sell. Harley-Davidson is a really obvious example of this narrative process. Harley-Davidson doesn’t sell motorcycles; it sells a narrative about freedom, individuality, underdog strength and bucking the system. People buy Harleys because they want to be part of that narrative. The bike itself is incidental.

From the Park Forest Elementary School library

Back in first grade, which would have been 1974 or so, my school’s library carried a series of books that were wildly popular because they did not read straight through like other books. Instead, the reader was faced with a choice at the end of each chapter: does the heroine choose X? If so, turn to page 92. Does the heroine choose Y? If so, turn to page 56. These books were nonlinear narratives.

Pulling the pieces together

We’re all well aware that in the near future, there are a few things we will almost certainly experience; a wider range of things that we may experience; and a plethora of things that may or may not happen. What we don’t know is when, how the cause-and-effects will play out, and what kinds of unknown variables may lie in store.

This makes business planning nearly impossible because a business plan is, at its heart, a linear narrative about how an organization intends to make money over a given span of time, usually 3-5 years, with a few broad brushstrokes describing the longer term.

But what if it was possible to write a business plan that followed the same structure as the nonlinear narratives that were so popular back in first grade? In the event of X, turn to page 101; in the event of Y, turn to page 87. Such a business plan would make the concepts “Plan B” and “Plan C” obsolete, because like Schroedinger’s cat, all options are equally valid until a particular one is called forth. It would also mean that a business could — theoretically anyway — swing back and forth between upticks and downturns much more easily, because the business owner isn’t fully banked on a single narrative requiring a particular set of economic conditions.

So for example, let’s say I pick six variables for which I want to create options:

• hyperinflation
• deflation
• martial law
• improvements such as stock & currency rallies
• shortages
• epidemic

What I do next, based on these variables, is to write six miniature business plans: one for each of the variables, in the traditional linear format, based on the assumptions that each variable requires. The end result is a catalogue of options covering all the aspects of my business, from which I can pick and choose as conditions require.

Say the government declares martial law. If I conduct business after dark — delivering pizza perhaps — this aspect of my business will be affected, but martial law isn’t necessarily going to have the same affect on my marketing. I can pull the “delivery” section out of the martial law plan and adapt my business to this variable much more rapidly than if I had to figure it out on the spot; additionally, I already know the impact on marketing is minimal, so I’m freed from having to even think about that part of it. All this gives me a huge competitive advantage and may even mean I’m the last pizza shop standing.

(In the case of the pizza shop, a martial law contingency plan might entail being prepared to deliver uncooked pizzas up until curfew so customers could cook them later. And if you have a healthy email announcement list or blog — something you’ll understand the importance of, along with other kinds of digital communications, if you’ve read Weblogs & New Media — you’ll be able to keep your customers as prepared as you are.)

So anyway, that’s the gist of my nonlinear business plan idea. Obviously it still needs much development, but I think it could be developed into something really useful for staying afloat as conditions deteriorate.

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