The location of the 2018 Winter Olympics has been announced! The three competing cities were Munich, Germany; Annecy, France; and Pyeongchang, South Korea. At 10AM Eastern Time, in a room thick with hushed anticipation, an envelope was slowly opened to reveal the winning city: Pyeongchang, South Korea! The crowd went nuts, many of South Korea’s supporters were seen jumping up and down – shouting in jubilation. Watching the announcement made me smile; pure joy in the faces of many is a sight to behold – even if it’s over live stream.
Why was South Korea picked? Well, to put it simply, cities that compete to hold the Olympics must submit plans that lay out the details of how their beloved community will be able to handle holding the massive event. If you want to be in the running at all, you need to begin planning and preparing – sometimes years in advance. And, this isn’t just a short power-point presenation. This is hundreds of pages worth of information about the changes you will make to your city’s transportation systems, hotels, restaurants, etc. The city chosen must endure a higher capacity of occupants than it has quite possibly ever seen before.
All of this Olympic city selection business has me thinking about start-ups. There are many companies out there that fly solely by the seat of their pants. They throw caution to the wind and charge forward without a proper heading. Sure, some of these companies succeed. But, many end up failing before they really even begin. Creating a road map for your business and doing some Olympic-sized preparation is something that you ought to consider before you create your own company. Like the old adage says, “If you fail to plan, you plan to fail.”
Today, we are taking the day to do some planning ourselves. We will be spending some time mapping out the plan for Quarter 3 and even figuring out our strategic plan for the upcoming years. I’m always excited when we set a path for the upcoming months. Though we have to be flexible and though many of these things can change, having something in place to start with is always a good idea.
What do you do to make sure you and your company stay on track?