Benefits of The One-Page Strategic Plan: Simplicity Scales & Focus Drives Results

One of the hard­est things to do in a fast-grow­ing com­pa­ny is to keep every­one focused on what’s most impor­tant: to take care of the cus­tomers, keep the busi­ness from being too chaot­ic inter­nal­ly and enable the busi­ness to scale towards the strate­gic long-term vision.

In a recent con­ver­sa­tion with a CEO and exec­u­tive team, the CEO clear­ly artic­u­lat­ed that he prefers to stay strate­gic and vision­ary. How­ev­er when there’s no clar­i­ty and trans­paren­cy around both finan­cial per­for­mance and oper­a­tional KPIs – as well as progress on the goals the team has cho­sen to imple­ment – he finds him­self drop­ping into details and micro­man­age­ment. He feels like a pilot fly­ing a plane with­out instru­ments or visu­al references.

That’s a nat­ur­al response if we don’t have the right infor­ma­tion flow­ing in to con­firm you are head­ing in the right direction.

Excel­lent report­ing sys­tems range from real-time, to dai­ly, week­ly and month­ly data to give senior lead­ers, and the peo­ple doing the work, the infor­ma­tion they need to know that things are on track. Goals and exe­cu­tion of the strat­e­gy that indi­cate the oper­a­tional part of the busi­ness is healthy, the finan­cial per­for­mance to know that you’re on track with the bud­get, and the per­for­mance and health of the team to know you’re get­ting stronger as you grow.

First, you need a clear and sim­ple strate­gic plan.

The One-Page Strate­gic Plan

The One-Page Strate­gic Plan (OPSP) – which CEOs rave about – is a core tool to help com­pa­nies scale and keep things sim­ple. It’s part of Scal­ing Up 2.0, the updat­ed ver­sion of Rock­e­feller Habits, for which I was for­tu­nate to spend hun­dreds of hours, inter­view­ing 50 CEOs, around the world.

You may have your own tools to help you to clar­i­fy, exe­cute your strat­e­gy and stay focused, but the OPSP is the best I’ve seen to march you towards your vision and get smarter along the way. And, well worth the chal­leng­ing process to get it right, and eas­i­er to main­tain the dis­ci­pline to iter­ate every 90 days, to sus­tain focus.

In a recent inter­view (Scroll down to view, and look for the seg­ment What is the Sin­gle Most Pow­er­ful Tool You Use with Your Clients?) with Lawrence & Co advi­sor Dean Ritchey, we talked about how the OPSP – which we’ve been hon­ing and per­fect­ing for 15 years at Lawrence & Co – is one of our favourite tools to help clients to be successful.

This doc­u­ment is designed to:

• Help you get to clear on all your annu­al and quar­ter­ly goals
• Be clear about what needs to be exe­cut­ed to be aligned with your strategy
• Make sure that you are accom­plish­ing what is need­ed to enhance your com­pet­i­tive advan­tage, oper­a­tional excel­lence and growth
• Align an exec­u­tive team and, ide­al­ly, an entire com­pa­ny around the long-term vision, the medi­um-term strat­e­gy the com­pa­ny will focus on to win, and what needs to be exe­cut­ed on an annu­al and quar­ter­ly basis to make the com­pa­ny achieves its growth tar­gets and becomes more capable.

The major ben­e­fit to this tool is it’s sim­ple, con­densed for­mat that forces peo­ple to be suc­cinct about what mat­ters most.

The Chal­lenge

• How sim­ple and scal­able is your vision, strat­e­gy and exe­cu­tion goals?
• What would you need to know, change or improve to know that the plan that you have will get you where you want to go?

If you need help to either build a sim­ple One-Page Strate­gic Plan that enables you to scale, or to do a tune-up to enhance your exist­ing plan, please let us know.

Addi­tion­al Podcasts

• Five Things That Lead to a Bad Strate­gic Plan
• The Annu­al Strate­gic Think­ing Meeting
• How to Get Lead­er­ship Teams to Think Strategically

Addi­tion­al Blogs

• How Sim­ple is Your Strategy?
• Strate­gic Lead­er­ship vs Tac­ti­cal Deci­sion Making
• How to Get the Most from Your Strate­gic Plan­ning Process

Lawrence & Co’s work focus­es on sus­tain­able and enhanced growth for you and your busi­ness. Our diverse and expe­ri­enced group of advi­sors can help your lead­ers and exec­u­tive teams stay com­pet­i­tive through the use of var­i­ous learn­ing tools includ­ing work­shops, webi­na­rs, exec­u­tive retreats, or one-to-one coaching.

We help high-achiev­ing lead­ers to have it all – a great busi­ness and a reward­ing life. Con­tact us for sim­ple and impact­ful advice. No BS. No fluff.