There is nothing evil about plans. They are essential tools. Is it possible to be successful without a good plan? Of course. Do plans increase your chances of success? Heck yes. P6 - Prior Planning Prevents Piss Poor Performance. When looking for funding, I would suggest not making jokes that suggest you don't value planning.
Just because actuals come in different from plan (even faaaar off) doesn't mean planning is not important or that the plan itself was not valuable. For one thing, it should cause you to ask yourself why things didn't happen as you planned and how that is going to effect future plans. Also, you shouldn't make a plan at the beginning of the year and consider it set in stone and continue to blindly manage from it (or do like many people do - throw it in a drawer and forget about it). A plan should be evergreen - meaning you update it monthly to reflect changes in the business you didn't expect and things you decide to do differently. You should also update your evergreen plan with actual results at the end of the month. Evaluate whether the forward looking part of the plan is still reasonable given results to date. Keep a copy of your original plan, so you can properly evaluate the year as a whole, but manage from your evergreen plan. Another handy tool is a 15 month rolling plan - the most recent 3 months of actual results and following 12 months of plan, updated monthly.
As for the value of plans, I've seen very successful businesses that almost bankrupted themselves because they didn't spend enough time planning - cash planning in particular. They may have exceeded their operating plan by a large margin, but revenue does not equal cash, capex and working capital don't show up on the P&L, and cash is king. You need to plan your balance sheet an cash flow in addition to your P&L. Your working capital/cash plans are probably the most important - they certainly are to anyone looking to provide you with funding.
