“We set out to make business planning easier, more practical and more effective” – Andrew 'Billy' Baxter, Founder & Senior Advisor of 24 Hour Business Plan
Creating a three-year business plan can be a genuinely enjoyable and energising experience if you do it right.
Yes, it involves a time commitment to work exclusively on the business rather than in it, but it shouldn't be a painfully drawn-out experience. I genuinely believe you can do it in 24 hours.
I know from experience you can create a clear and actionable growth strategy in four intensive 6-hour sessions when you bring the right team from an organisation together. And I've learned in my 30-year career it definitely helps to also have excellent facilitators – with everyone focused on sharpening the organisation’s growth ambitions into clear, concise action plans for Year 1.
HARD LESSONS ABOUT MAKING A BUSINESS PLAN WORK
I found out the hard way a business plan isn't worth the paper it's printed on if no-one understands it, or ever looks at it.
About 7 years ago I was tasked with reinvigorating one of Australia's largest advertising groups. As the newly appointed CEO, with more than 10 companies reporting to me, I was keen to hear from the individual leaders about how their businesses were tracking against their strategic plans.
I soon discovered most of them didn't have anything like an up-to-date long term business plan. But in their defence, the traditional methods for creating and maintaining a plan were problematic: you dedicated some of your best team members to weeks or even months of strategising; and you ended up with a big heavy strategy deck a hundred or more pages thick. Then to get people on the same page, you had to run a series of workshops and town halls.
And I knew going into this that most of those traditional business plans get filed away in the bottom drawer or the file server after all the work has been done.
So as a leadership team we set about clearly defining an easy to explain long term vision for the overarching group. One that had both an inspiring emotional aim, as well as a big hairy, audacious financial goal.
We also reset our values, culture and structure to support that vision. We became clearer on what products and services we would need to offer to achieve our vision. And then we crafted stories around the proof points that showcased what we were already achieving.
The challenge then was to determine what we needed to do in the first year of the longer term plan. My boss at a previous agency group had asked me what I thought would make merging three agencies successful, and I started reeling off some ideas. By the end, he'd written down 10 things, and he said, "These 10 things look pretty darn good to me, I'm going to call you every second week and see how you're going in getting them done".
That moment of clarity taught me what I needed to do: instead of trying to develop annual operating plans the traditional way, which can be too convoluted, I just needed to start with the list of Top 10 must-dos for the year.
That list was easy to explain to everyone in the group and soon took on its own life because it made everyone (including me) accountable. We referred to it in all our executive meetings and tracked our progress against each goal.
All of this meant we had the whole leadership team involved in getting everyone aligned around the long term plan and the annual operating plans.
Within three years we'd achieved fifty per cent growth in a market that was only seeing single digit growth.
REAL WORLD EXPERIENCE IN CREATING WINNING BUSINESS STRATEGIES
During my time in the advertising and communications sector I worked with some very smart people who didn't think much of corporate norms. And most industries are populated with people who are wary of what management consultants suggest, because 'consultant speak' doesn't ring true for them – particularly if they can tell the consultants haven’t had the firsthand experience of running successful businesses.
Younger team members especially will call out when they experience a disconnect between an organisation's stated values or purpose and the lived reality.
I've found it pays to involve more than just the management team in conversations about your organisation's values, purpose and culture because you'll gain a great diversity of insights right across the team, from the customer-facing front line to the back office. Everyone has their own reasons for choosing to work in the organisation, and you could uncover some terrific insights about the organisation's future potential.
Plus, when you involve your broader team early in your long term business strategy, you're more likely to get early buy-in and alignment. Though you do need good facilitators.
I think what sets our 24 Hour Business Plan Senior Advisors apart from the consulting firms is we're practical, experienced leaders who involve everybody in the workshops – and we're really passionate about unlocking growth.
We know good ideas and insights can come from anyone in the team, and we have plenty of real-world experience in helping people build on their talents.
We've motivated a lot of people to achieve meaningful success during our time running companies as CEOs, and we've been through plenty of challenging times too.
Most of us also sit on boards, and one of the great skills of board members is asking the right questions at the right time. Sometimes that means calling out what's not working. Other times it's about encouraging people to expand their ideas beyond the comfort zone of group think.
And then it's our job to help teams identify which ideas give you a much higher chance of growth.
CREATING A BUSINESS PLAN THAT WORKS
I know you can create a successful business plan in 24 hours. Actually, I've found it's easier to do it in four highly focused and stimulating workshops of six hours each.
The aim of each workshop is really about aligning your team around your ambitions for growth – because when everyone is on the same page, you'll make strategic decisions faster and more effectively, and your team will be very clear on what needs doing.
At the end of your 24 Hour Business Plan workshops you'll have created four key one page summaries for success that make sense to your team:
Market Context summary of industry trends, customer needs, your organisation's DNA, and your differentiators versus your competitors
Business Strategy on a page (effectively an elevator pitch of your Business Plan)
Growth Plan to align your team around your ambitious financial targets
Top 10 must-dos for the year ahead – plus a one-page action plan for each goal.
Of course, you'll also have a 160-slide deck that explains the detail of your strategic plans, and how to make them happen. But most importantly, this gives you a summary of your ambitions in just 14 clear, concise pages.
I recommend you keep copies of them on your phone and laptop so you can check them regularly, especially during executive meetings. And ideally, you'll put your list of Top 10 must-dos up on a wall, so you have a cheat-sheet of your playbook front of mind, all the time.
That's really all it takes: make your business plan a living document for what comes next.
