I’ve spent the last few weeks re-appraising my business plan in advance for 2008. Next year my business will pass its second birthday and I want to change the focus in a few places. I also want to bring other people on-board either as equity partners in specific products/services or as staff, and that all needs planning in detail.

The problem is, most business plans are dull to write and dull to read. I always felt that the inherent wordiness of them made them difficult to deal with, and they only made sense if you were looking for investment - you wrote them for people who didn’t know your business. I started thinking about what might be useful to write for people inside the business (i.e. me), and how it could help me make sure I was on track and doing well.

This morning my RSS reader threw up (via a Technorati sub to ‘business innovation’ a post called The Canonball Business Plan over at Seeds of Growth

The idea is quite simple. There really is a Canonball run (raced illegally), in the spirit of the film. The participants are attempting to break the record for a coast-to-coast drive, and produce a Driveplan that highlights key milestones en-route, fuel stops, timings, major risks from weather to what the ‘safe’ limit is to breaking the speed limits without ending up in jail in each jurisdiction.

What if we had something like that for a business plan internally? What if those of us who need to get a bit of focus sat down and thought about key milestones over a period, the risks and hazards, and the eventual goals. What if we updated it with real data as it comes in to see how we are faring against our guesses and predictions? On one screen we immediately see what we need to see.

It’s an interesting idea, and the only reason I can see anybody having to object against it is that it is inspired indirectly from a pretty cheesy film about bootlegging booze. The core idea seems sound enough though.