You Can’t Win if You’re Not on the Same Page

Ten rea­sons why the One-Page Strate­gic Plan from Scal­ing Up improves a company’s performance.

Dis­claimer: I have a bit of a bias as I was a key con­trib­u­tor to the book Scal­ing Up and inter­viewed the 50 CEO’s that are fea­tured and share their per­spec­tives in the book.

Remem­ber the back of the nap­kin – the one where you doo­dled your first busi­ness plan? Or per­haps it was a white­board in win­dow­less room where you fer­vent­ly scrawled your ideas on how to change or dom­i­nate your indus­try. Regard­less, it was that one page that helped bring your busi­ness, or ideas to fruition.

It doesn’t mat­ter if you’re a CEO at the helm of estab­lished orga­ni­za­tion or an entre­pre­neur who cre­at­ed a com­pa­ny from the ground up, I’ve seen many busi­ness lead­ers devel­op extra­or­di­nary ideas on the back of a nap­kin over lunch meet­ings – and prob­a­bly more over a din­ner late into the evening. The point is – there’s a remark­able sense of clar­i­ty that comes from cre­at­ing a strate­gic plan that fits on one page.

Equal­ly impor­tant, is what hap­pens next – every­one leaves ener­gized and on the same page, off to exe­cute on the plan or idea with a clear pur­pose. And even if they don’t have the nap­kin in front of them, the image of that plan is burnt in their mind. The chal­lenge for exec­u­tives becomes how do you sus­tain the momentum?

For CEOs of small­er-sized com­pa­nies who are not at the mer­cy of the bureau­cra­cy and com­plex­i­ty of larg­er orga­ni­za­tions, this is less of a chal­lenge. But what hap­pens when there are 10,000 dif­fer­ent ver­sions of that plan-on-a- nap­kin, rep­re­sent­ing every employee’s indi­vid­ual inter­pre­ta­tion of the plan?

Often­times, busi­ness lead­ers are too focused on steer­ing their ship through day-to-day hur­dles, and as a result, they lose sight of company’s vision and goals. I also see many lead­ers who become extreme­ly tac­ti­cal and short-term focused, caus­ing them to miss out on the oppor­tu­ni­ties that made them suc­cess­ful ini­tial­ly. This can be detri­men­tal because when lead­ers lose focus, so do employ­ees. The result? Every­one is exe­cut­ing his or her own ver­sion of what they think is the plan, which is absolute­ly scary and cer­tain­ly not good for business.

Instead, win­ning requires lead­er­ship teams to cre­ate a strate­gic plan that is eas­i­ly under­stood, com­mu­ni­cat­ed, and cham­pi­oned. This is why I encour­age my clients to use the One-Page Strate­gic from Scal­ing Up, because it takes a laser-focused approach to cap­tur­ing all the impor­tant busi­ness strat­e­gy com­po­nents – from core val­ues and mea­sur­able tar­gets to who is specif­i­cal­ly respon­si­ble for accom­plish­ing the top pri­or­i­ties each quarter.

The One-Page Strate­gic Plan makes the dif­fer­ence between com­pa­nies that pros­per and those that unfor­tu­nate­ly tread water and here are ten rea­sons why; busi­ness lead­ers who use the One-Page Strate­gic Plan:

1. Get clear on who they are as a com­pa­ny and where they want to be in ten years. For many lead­ers, it may seem like daunt­ing task to devel­op a long-term vision but with the One-Page Strate­gic Plan, lead­er­ship teams work through small­er, action-ori­ent­ed com­po­nents, which in the end estab­lish the company’s vision and the plan to get there.
2. Iden­ti­fy the biggest oppor­tu­ni­ties and obsta­cles ahead for their busi­ness. The only con­stant is change and if your com­pa­ny is not agile to changes in the mar­ket, it will become irrel­e­vant. Putting a bunch of smart peo­ple in a room on a quar­ter­ly basis ensures that the biggest oppor­tu­ni­ties and obsta­cles are iden­ti­fied and debat­ed reg­u­lar­ly. This is cru­cial because you don’t want to miss oppor­tu­ni­ties or unex­pect­ed­ly face obstacles.
3. Build a shared con­vic­tion and greater com­mit­ment to the strat­e­gy. Hav­ing a plan is imper­a­tive, but it’s also impor­tant that those exe­cut­ing it are in agree­ment and com­mit­ted to mak­ing it hap­pen. The One-Page Strate­gic Plan process helps busi­ness leaders:

• Under­stand one anoth­er bet­ter, which improves cama­raderie and con­tributes to diver­si­ty of think­ing, greater col­lab­o­ra­tion and the gen­er­a­tion of bet­ter ideas;
• Break down bar­ri­ers and silos that exist­ed between them or their busi­ness units, lead­ing to ideas that are less like­ly to ben­e­fit only one depart­ment, but instead improve the suc­cess and cross-fer­til­iza­tion of ideas across departments;
• Estab­lish a shared con­vic­tion and there­fore they buy into the plan because they cre­at­ed it togeth­er in the first place.

This all leads to a greater prob­a­bil­i­ty of suc­cess, regard­less of whether or not the plan is perfect.

1. Enrich their lead­er­ship capa­bil­i­ties. Lead­ers (and employ­ees) get the chance to dri­ve major pri­or­i­ties, giv­ing top exec­u­tives the abil­i­ty to see how their key tal­ent han­dles and deliv­ers on major initiatives.

For exam­ple, one of my clients need­ed some­one to dri­ve a major project and when an employ­ee vol­un­teered, exec­u­tives were skep­ti­cal because they didn’t believe he had the cal­iber of lead­er­ship required. Well, to everyone’s sur­prise this employ­ee was stel­lar through­out the project, and in fact, estab­lished him­self as one of the best lead­ers in the com­pa­ny. The per­spec­tive went from ​“yeah he’s a good guy” to ​“wow, he is amazing.”

See­ing who vol­un­teers to lead ini­tia­tives is real­ly quite impor­tant because:

Your future exec­u­tives are typ­i­cal­ly the peo­ple who vol­un­teer for strate­gic projects, which helps great­ly with suc­ces­sion planning.

• The exec­u­tive lead­er­ship can wit­ness their abil­i­ty to deliv­er on ini­tia­tives, which pro­vides insight into who is ready to move up the organization.
• Future lead­ers ben­e­fit from greater inter­ac­tion with the top tier; and
• Employ­ees who deliv­er, grow sig­nif­i­cant­ly in their lead­er­ship capabilities.

Now, some employ­ees (and lead­ers) will not be able to deliv­er, but ide­al­ly, if this process is applied cor­rect­ly, senior exec­u­tives will be able to use project lead­er­ship as a lit­mus test to deter­mine who is capa­ble of assum­ing greater respon­si­bil­i­ty. 

1. Inspire employ­ees with a crys­tal-clear vision that rein­forces why their efforts every­day mat­ter. Employ­ees have desire to be a part of some­thing that is excit­ing in terms of the impact a com­pa­ny makes and the suc­cess it can gen­er­ate. The One-Page Strate­gic Plan rein­forces across the orga­ni­za­tion why the com­pa­ny mat­ters, where it wants to be in ten years and what must hap­pen each quar­ter to achieve that goal. This will with­out a doubt focus and ener­gize employees.

Many lead­ers also engage their employ­ees at a grass­roots lev­el to help deter­mine how to accom­plish pri­or­i­ties. For exam­ple, if the goal is to elim­i­nate $10 mil­lion in expens­es, by solic­it­ing employ­ee feed­back on where to reduce costs, employ­ees gain greater own­er­ship in the goal. Addi­tion­al­ly, the oppor­tu­ni­ty for suc­cess improves because employ­ees are often the first to know where mon­ey is being used inef­fi­cient­ly. 

1. Unleash a cul­ture that empow­ers employ­ees with respon­si­bil­i­ty and account­abil­i­ty. Human beings are eas­i­ly dis­tract­ed and gen­er­al­ly have a hard time fol­low­ing through on chal­leng­ing projects. Put anoth­er way – if you know you have a year to work on a project, typ­i­cal­ly, you will only focus on it dur­ing the last 30 days (that’s assum­ing you remem­bered to do it because you were giv­en it 11 months ago and it’s amaz­ing how fast things fall off our radar).

The One-Page Strate­gic Plan cre­ates a cul­ture of dis­ci­pline because pri­or­i­ties are reviewed in 13-week inter­vals, which caus­es an innate urgency to get projects done. I have seen time and time again that com­pa­nies get at least twice the amount accom­plished when pri­or­i­ties are eval­u­at­ed four times a year ver­sus annu­al­ly. Fur­ther­more, if the plan is done right, employ­ees will know exact­ly what the three to five pri­or­i­ties are, and ide­al­ly every­one will be asso­ci­at­ed in some way with the num­ber one pri­or­i­ty. Employ­ees will also be empow­ered to say no to non- crit­i­cal requests that are not tied to the company’s top priorities.

1. Elim­i­nate pri­or­i­ties that sim­ply don’t fit with the company’s strate­gic direc­tion. If you don’t have a for­mal process for deter­min­ing quar­ter­ly pri­or­i­ties, how do you know if your employ­ees are work­ing on crit­i­cal ini­tia­tives that are actu­al­ly mov­ing the com­pa­ny ahead? Even worse, what hap­pens if employ­ees are work­ing on ini­tia­tives that are detri­men­tal to the busi­ness’ suc­cess? The One-Page Strate­gic Plan helps lead­ers iden­ti­fy quar­ter­ly pri­or­i­ties that are con­gru­ent across the orga­ni­za­tion, reduc­ing the like­li­hood that employ­ees just pick ones they think are impor­tant but that may not be beneficial.
2. Uncov­er hid­den issues that are inhibit­ing suc­cess. After 12 to 18 months of exe­cut­ing quar­ter­ly pri­or­i­ties, many pre­vi­ous­ly hid­den issues become exposed and dealt with, which means the com­pa­ny can move into a posi­tion of greater strength because exec­u­tives are able to notice new oppor­tu­ni­ties they didn’t see before. For exam­ple, I often see sit­u­a­tions where new­ly appoint­ed lead­ers join com­pa­nies only to dis­cov­er a pletho­ra of issues, and the longer they are there, the more they find.

Cre­at­ing a rig­or­ous process for estab­lish­ing and mea­sur­ing quar­ter­ly pri­or­i­ties sur­faces issues, aligns lead­ers and focus­es the busi­ness, which over sev­er­al quar­ters, results in less emer­gen­cies to address and fix. Con­se­quent­ly, lead­ers can cap­i­tal­ize on new oppor­tu­ni­ties lever­ag­ing the strength in what the com­pa­ny has built.

1. Gen­er­ate momen­tum that is sim­i­lar to the Fly­wheel effect – a con­cept intro­duced by Jim Collins, author of Good to Great, Built to Last and How the Mighty Fall. Accord­ing to Collins, ​“Good to great comes about by a cumu­la­tive process – step by step, action by action, deci­sion by deci­sion, turn by turn of the fly­wheel – that adds up to sus­tained and spec­tac­u­lar results.

Con­sid­er­able momen­tum can be achieved if every busi­ness unit focus­es on mak­ing notable improve­ments on five key things each quar­ter. Addi­tion­al­ly, imag­ine how incred­i­bly pow­er­ful it would be to have every employ­ee focus­ing his or her efforts on mak­ing a sin­gle, but sig­nif­i­cant, improve­ment for the busi­ness, for exam­ple, increas­ing units sold per month.

1. Com­mu­ni­cate with clar­i­ty and engage in a con­sis­tent two-way dia­logue with employ­ees on the strate­gic plan. Once busi­ness lead­ers have a clear vision of the company’s direc­tion, the oppor­tu­ni­ties and obsta­cles and the top pri­or­i­ties that need to be accom­plished each quar­ter, they are per­fect­ly posi­tioned to engage employ­ees in help­ing to achieve the pri­or­i­ties. Employ­ees are typ­i­cal­ly hun­gry for infor­ma­tion on the company’s goals and per­for­mance, par­tic­u­lar­ly in indus­tries fac­ing ongo­ing change and com­pet­i­tive pres­sures. By improv­ing the flow of com­mu­ni­ca­tion, employ­ees will bet­ter under­stand each indi­vid­ual, team and busi­ness unit’s pri­or­i­ties and con­tri­bu­tion to the strategy.

As a result, they will be more will­ing to explore ideas that ben­e­fit the entire orga­ni­za­tion rather than just them­selves personally.

Improv­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tions based on a clear­ly artic­u­lat­ed One-Page Strate­gic Plan will also decrease the all too often expe­ri­enced com­mu­ni­ca­tions gap between the exec­u­tive lead­er­ship team and front line employ­ees who ulti­mate­ly work every day with cus­tomers, part­ners and sup­pli­ers. I have yet to see an employ­ee tell me, ​“my CEO com­mu­ni­cates too much.” Instead, it’s usu­al­ly the oth­er way around with employ­ees often sharing:

• “I don’t know the strat­e­gy for our com­pa­ny or how we are per­form­ing against it.”
• “We nev­er hear from our CEO or exec­u­tive lead­er­ship team. It would be great to see them walk the floor once in a while.”
• “I wish they would ask me for my feed­back; after all, I’m the one that works every­day with our customers.”
• “It would help if I knew what our tar­gets were each quarter.”

When I work with clients on the One-Page Strate­gic Plan, I strong­ly encour­age them to devel­op a quar­ter­ly com­mu­ni­ca­tions plan along­side the quar­ter­ly pri­or­i­ties where time­li­ness and trans­paren­cy of infor­ma­tion rules. I also encour­age them to engage in a healthy debate and two-way dia­logue with employ­ees. Why? Well, if employ­ees can chal­lenge ideas or poten­tial­ly bad deci­sions, two things hap­pen. First, it builds a strong cul­ture of col­lab­o­ra­tion and diver­si­ty of think­ing beyond the senior lead­er­ship team, which means the gen­er­a­tion of bet­ter ideas across the orga­ni­za­tion. Sec­ond, if employ­ees con­tribute to the deci­sion-mak­ing and idea cre­ation process, they too will have a greater sense of own­er­ship in the pri­or­i­ties and the outcomes.

The most effec­tive way to plan and get plans executed

In my coach­ing prac­tice, I have had the oppor­tu­ni­ty to use many dif­fer­ent tools to help com­pa­nies improve their per­for­mance; yet, I have vol­un­tar­i­ly cho­sen the Rock­e­feller Habits/​Scaling Up method­ol­o­gy, because it is by far the best set of tools and tech­niques avail­able to help busi­ness­es sus­tain pos­i­tive and prof­itable growth. The One-Page Strate­gic Plan is also, in my opin­ion, the most effec­tive way to plan and get plans exe­cut­ed in a way that improves a company’s performance.

All too often busi­ness lead­ers are so caught up in all the urgent but not impor­tant stuff that they lose sight of the company’s pur­pose and goals. Cre­at­ing an action-ori­ent­ed strate­gic plan based on quar­ter­ly pri­or­i­ties keeps short- term pri­or­i­ties top of mind through­out the orga­ni­za­tion, while help­ing com­pa­nies achieve the long-term vision. It also rein­vig­o­rates and moti­vates employ­ees by demon­strat­ing how their day-to-day efforts mat­ter and con­tribute to over­all success.

Now, this is my per­spec­tive, but don’t just take my word for it. Scal­ing Up is filled with tes­ti­mo­ni­als from exec­u­tives around the world who have shared how these tech­niques have made a last­ing dif­fer­ence in their orga­ni­za­tions. If you’re seri­ous about accel­er­at­ing pos­i­tive busi­ness per­for­mance, don’t miss out on the dra­mat­ic results that can be achieved using the Rock­e­feller Habits method­ol­o­gy or the One-Page Strate­gic Plan.