Many business owners know this. You spend so much time crafting that perfect business plan. It’s over 100 pages, it covers every part of your business, it includes graphs, an index, market potential reviews, and perhaps even a glossary!
The reality is that when businesses have these complicated plans, they collect dust on the owner’s highest shelf. They were made for bankers, investors, and other external stakeholders. They were not made to actually grow the business, nor to share with employees.
Lets fix this.
We had this same problem when we owned EMTEQ. We found the solution when creating the the Single-Page Plan. This simple and effective alternative to the typical 100 page business plan united our company and literally kept everyone on the same page. How did it turn out to be effective?
1. It’s defined.
The Single-Page Plan includes a business’s vision, mission, Strategic Deployment Initiatives, and targets aligned with the 5 pillars of business: Growth, Customer Delight, Innovation, Productivity, and Great Place to Work (GPTW). The structure of the plan keeps it defined so teams can focus on its content, not format.
All parts of the plan are on one page, making it easy for employees to understand and align with it. At EMTEQ, our employees would all have a copy of the Single-Page Plan in order to become familiar with it and understand how their input could make a difference.
2. It is ready to be executed.
Being simple enough for all employees to follow makes it easier for the company to execute off it. The STUCK Breakthrough Strategies process calls for a monthly execution cycle which includes a Monthly Action Plan (MAP) Meeting. Are the targets outlined on your Single-Page Plan on track to being achieved? Who is doing what, by when, to make sure it does? What is the status of your 30/60/90 day forecast? Will this status improve or hurt your targets within the Customer Delight pillar? What about the Innovation pillar?
The Single-Page Plan, accompanied with our process, improves team’s accountability towards successfully achieving a plan. To help businesses navigate their way through the STUCK Breakthrough Strategies® process, we released our all-in-one solution for growing a business, from the creation of the plan to holding a MAP Meeting.
3. It motivates employees.
We mentioned before that we gave employees at EMTEQ their own plan. When we would walk around with our own copy of the plan and when employees saw it, they recognized it, and knew how important it was. The transparency of the plan led employees to ask themselves “What’s in it for me?” and the simplicity of this plan lets them see their impact. Whether its a motivator like gain-sharing or profit-sharing, having a transparent and simple way for employees to understand what their impact can be, they will be more motivated.
Getting Everybody on the Same Page, with a Single-Page Plan
Jerry Jendusa attended the BizTimes Media’s 90 Ideas and 90 Minutes event and spoke about the STUCK Breakthrough Strategies process, the Single-Page Plan and its 5 pillars.
His new book, Get Unstuck, offers 11 tips about having a plan like this and includes more information about how it is created.
How to Get Started
Ready to create your own plan? We made our process from creation of the plan to monthly execution available by offering our all-in-one solution for business growth. Included in this cloud-based product is an organized walk-through of our process, with the tools to help you be successful while using it.
For more tips on how to improve your business, follow STUCK Coaching on LinkedIn, Twitter, and YouTube.