How to Get Your Strategic Plan & Business Plan on One Page

Having written many Strategic / Business Plans for clients over the years, I am often surprised to see how quickly the plan was shelved to collect dust in “business plan heaven” despite the time, cost and effort in preparing them.

In my quest for the best resources, I discovered the wonderful website .. Verne Harnish Verne is called “Growth Guy” and medium-sized buses in the States just to reach four consecutive years of growth of 20% + – which are called “gazelles”. This type of research and created the “Strategic Plan for a page, and is brilliant in its simplicity, the theory and content.

The document itself. It is an important page that limited space and forces you to be concise, focused, and specify the main objectives and priorities.

SWOT analysis. Nothing new here, except the need to actually specify the top 5 strengths, weaknesses, opportunities more profitable in the short term and most dangerous threats facing it.

Values and beliefs. How can your business? What makes their culture unique? When your values are clear, it is easier to make decisions.

What is your goal? Why are you doing what you’re doing? Which is why you are in your business?

Actions. What specific actions do you need to take in the future to enable you to reach and better fulfill its purpose and core values and beliefs?

Objectives. Where do you want your company to be in 3-5 years in terms of revenue, profitability and market value?

Guidelines and key skills. Top 5 What specific actions should you and your business and take as priorities in measurable terms to meet or exceed their targets for years 3-5.

What is your brand promise? What you need to do to satisfy their customers and how to do better than your competitors? What is its added value proposition and differentiate in your market? Be honest and commercially ideas here.

Annual and quarterly goals. The balance of the plan above uses this approach to see the details in its annual and quarterly financial goals and priorities. Depending on the size and complexity of your business, you can choose to upgrade your plan at least quarterly or annually.

Your 5 most important priorities is the heart of the plan. The most important aspect of this plan is a page to decide on their 5 most important to work on the priorities for the next quarter / year. There can be no more than 5 so it is highly focused on securing implementation. There must be a person responsible and deadlines. If you do these, they are working on the most important things in your business. Now that’s impressive.

People. Your team must know what are your 5 most important priorities. That there can be no more than 3 key priorities on which their performance is evaluated. These must be aligned with the business’ top 5 priorities. You should now have resolved their implementation, evaluation and retention system of the people are being constantly evaluated and supported by sector work and its priorities all the time. This alignment of goals and commitment, and management team is incredibly powerful.

Smart Numbers and Numbers criticism. Identify what measures or proportions to provide a unique image for your company’s future performance that are aligned with its core values and financial objectives. What are the 1 or 2 significant, quantifiable and crucial indicators for success in your business?

Themes, pictures and events. Seek to develop a theme for the year entering the psyche of the team and win their commitment to their vision and priorities. Develop a unique, creative and attractive way of issuance and other key performance numbers for the team – your business marker. Even an unforgettable celebration team can enjoy success if the objectives and theme works.

But how and why this job?

The simplicity and alignment.

The simplicity is that it is the life of a page document can be updated periodically. I use A3 size larger for my clients. Clients and their teams can be put into work table for all the walls were constantly reminded of the main priorities. Some confidential or sensitive data can be removed through the distribution of the company if necessary.

The matrix design ensures that there is no plan from left to right alignment of the core values of law through quarterly top priority. The overall ability to align business priorities first 5 of each team member with the best 3 priorities creates a powerful synergy that can work for you.

In my opinion, this is much more practical and to conduct strategic planning to ensure that is kept alive in his business. There are still good reasons why long versions of traditional business and strategic plans are prepared for use by bankers, financiers, investors, etc. However, in order to manage I think you just can not go beyond this approach to planning.