Henry Hudson had an interesting career. Did you know his career was defined by 4 epic journeys? As an Englishman and legendary explorer, he was hired by England to discover a faster passage to the Orient. He developed a plan and was given the resources needed to complete his journey. After 2 attempts to find the passage by traveling north, he was promptly fired. Although he accomplished some useful things on his first 2 journeys like discovering new whaling areas and mapping an unknown area, he did not do what his funding source told him to do. He was fired because he did not accomplish the objectives of his plan.

As I read my daughters 4th grade text, I was struck by the similarities between Hudson and modern entrepreneurs. When you are planning for a journey into the unknown while sipping tea in your home port, all you can do is use your best judgment based on limited data. This is the nature of exploration. You should expect things to deviate from the plan. This is why I'm always baffled by traditional business plans that describe a journey into the unknown but often do not allow for deviations from the plan....but I digress.

Voyage #3: He had the same goal in mind only this time he was sailing for the Dutch West India Company and he plotted a course west. After much effort, he sailed along the east coast of the US and found a great harbor, later to become New York City, and a river, aptly named the Hudson River. An interesting side bar is that my office overlooks the Huson River in Troy, New York which roughly marks the northernmost point of Hudson's voyage up the river. Anyway, Hudson claimed the land for the Dutch and was the pride of the Dutch West India Company even though he failed in his attempt to find a passage to the Orient. When he went back to England, he was thrown in jail for sailing under the Dutch flag.

Hudson's life as an explorer really speaks to me. I'm not a famed explorer, I don't have his accomplishments, hell, I don't even have a beard and I get sea sick easily. However, I think that all entrepreneurs share a passion for exploration and are not afraid to make a course correction when needed, even if it means being fired or thrown in jail.

If you work at a dry cleaner, you are unlikely to have a customer bring in a dirty tuxedo shirt stained with hot wing sauce. How often do you eat chicken wings when you are wearing a tuxedo? Wing sauce on a tuxedo shirt is about as common as venture capital in volatile economic times. Traditionally, an entrepreneur will write a business plan that outlines the journey to build a business and tie it to resources, i.e. money, people, and equipment. If an investor likes the business plan and is satisfied with the risk, an investment might be made and the new company is launched. The entrepreneur attracts venture investment with a sound, focused business plan. The venture investor typically demands laser focus on the goal of the plan. How likely is it to have a business plan that remains focused on the same goals over the life of the business? About as likely as wing sauce on your tuxedo. 

Volatility and uncertainty make it impossible to accurately describe the “journey” and to match it with appropriate resources. In the early days of Evident Technologies, we started as a telecom company. With laser-focused business plan and resources, we launched and pointed our ship towards the optical switching Promised Land as described in our business plan. Soon after we started the journey, the entire telecom market was wiped out. We watched as many of our contemporaries were unable to change direction due to internal momentum and because of the demands of their investors. Once an investor pays for a journey, they expect a certain outcome and rightfully have a difficult time changing course. To continue down the same path as specified in your original business plan is crazy if you notice that the customers have disappeared.

During non-volatile times, outcomes are easier to predict. During volatile times, you need to expect deviations and course corrections driven by external forces as another component to the business strategy. Business strategy should have resources matched to an execution plan that considers external conditions like customer trends, economic environment, etc… all things that are outside of anybody's control. Including external forces in the strategy most likely results in changes to the tasks and priorities in the execution plan and may require an adjustment to the resources. The business can remain laser focused. The focus has changed to a target that is more appropriate given conditions beyond the company’s control.

Makes you wonder about the guy at the dry cleaner. You pay him the get the stain out of your shirt and you don’t care what journey he has taken to get there.