Now here’s a concept that sings sweetly to the homework-dodging schoolboy in me – too much written work gets in the way of success. It’s something I’ve always believed on some level, but it takes gutsy meddlesome spirits to sell it to a world that’s found emotional security in spreadsheets and pie charts for many years now. Sound appealing?

David Sloly, our creative director, and Ian Sanders, author and business coach, will be speaking at the South by Southwest Interactive (SXSWi) Festival in Austin, Texas on Saturday (March the 13th) about their new theory “Unplan Your Business”. It seems the would-be entrepreneurs and business leaders in all of us have become so loaded with access to information, and dependent on it, we find it easy to get lost in the planning of our commercial world domination. Meanwhile, we lose out to the early birds who just get on and do it.

In today’s fast-moving business world this sounds like a great new idea. But, like all the most valuable wisdom, it might just be a reminder of the things we’ve forgotten. After all, when Victor Kiam famously liked the razor so much he bought the company, Excel and PowerPoint were years away. In more recent times, it took just one night for Sabeer Bhatia to scribble out the business plan for Hotmail – later sold to Microsoft for $400 million.

David and Ian will be encouraging anyone who will listen (so far over 120 of them) to ditch the number-crunching and go with their gut instinct; which is great news for those of us who are still talking about what we were going to do, before we got bored of the business plan. If it sounds like this is the sort of perspective that could help you put your dreams into action, go and join them.

Just don’t waste any more time thinking about it…

SXSWi core conversation, ‘How to unplan your business’, 5.00pm CST, Saturday March 13, The Hilton (E), Austin Texas.

If you can’t make it, take a look at this to get the gist.

Julian Burrett is going to be doing less.

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