When organizations do the same thing, year after year, don’t adapt to changes in the market, or fail to adopt new technologies, they will eventually be succeeded by smarter competitors. Examples include Blockbuster, Sears, Mapquest and Nortel.

Continuous Improvement, or CI, is a great concept to improve business processes, every day, bit by bit. When implemented right, CI becomes a culture, a way of thinking throughout the organization. For me personally, CI is also a way to justify my tendency to be lazy: “hey, if I can do something with less effort and with the same or better result, why not do it the easy way?”

Everyone is familiar with the terms “Business Plan” and “Strategic Plan”. When asked “what is the difference”, many will probably struggle. On top of that, since these are not scientifically agreed upon terms, one can find a wide variety of definitions and interpretations for the two.

A Business Plan is often associated with a founding document for a start-up, written to obtain a bank loan or venture capital. It answers the “who” and “what” of the business, including your company’s organizational structure, who is running it, who is the competition and who the customer, your marketing plan and financial projections. It defines where you want to take your business.

According to the 2017 BDC Report “The Coming Wave of Business Transitions in Canada”, 40% of Canada’s small-business owners are expected to exit their business within the next 5 years.

A serious and urgent problem is that many of these organizations are not ready and may fail soon after the owner stops showing up at work.

Reasons often include:

• the management team is not trained to independently lead the business
• responsibilities of team members are not clearly defined
• work processes are not sufficiently developed

It is obvious that when these problems are not addressed prior to the transition, the results can be devastating for the new owner or the younger generation that took over through family succession.