How This Book Can Help You Develop a Powerful Business Plan That Works

How This Book Can Help You
Develop a Powerful Business
Plan That Works
T
his book gives you a proven method to help ensure your com-
pany’s success. Organizations fail to accomplish their goals for
one simple reason: The management story being told is incomplete,
inaccurate, and incongruent. This book cuts past the traditional
problems of planning and provides management with a document-
ed method of building a simplified business plan that works. You’ll
learn how to tell a story that is inclusive of employees and empow-
ers them to participate in the company success.
xxvii
INTRODUCTION
T
HE
F
IVE
C
RITICAL
I
NGREDIENTS OF A
S
UCCESSFUL
B
USINESS
P
LAN
There are five conditions critical to successfully building a power-
ful, executable business plan. You must:
1. Simplify definitions and use words in plain business

language.
2. Clearly demonstrate the relationships among planning
elements.
3. Successfully link the connections between your strategic,
operational, organizational, resources, and contingency
plans.
4. Incorporate all functions into a single planning model.
5. Achieve total employee involvement by taking the busi-
ness plan to all levels.
I wrote this book for you as a manager, someone who is the
steward of any organization, be it large or small. The concepts of
business apply no matter whether you are an entrepreneur or a
manager for a well-established, publicly traded company.
Companies are organizations, no matter what their size, type, or
product. This means you must have an integrated business plan no
matter who you are or what you do. Business planning is important
whether you are a start-up company in e-business or working on a
multinational planning team. This book gives you a place to start,
a system to make sense of the confusion around planning, and a
model to build a complete package.
W
HY THE
T
RADITIONAL
P
LANNING
M
ODELS
FOR
B

UILDING A
B
USINESS
P
LAN
D
ON
’
T
W
ORK
I can contribute to your success by sharing a method of business
planning based on an approach that’s different from the dry, tradi-
Introduction
xxviii
tional numbers method. My experience is that you are currently
using one of three approaches to business planning: traditional,
piecemeal, or one with a deflected focus.
The Traditional Approach: Good Intentions,
Dismal Results
A large number of published works and many management con-
sultants simply say the same thing. They are replays of the same
themes of setting the vision, establishing goals, and getting
employee buy-in. Had the traditional approach of forming a plan-
ning team and producing a document been successful, there would
be no need for this book.
The traditional planning approach fails because the required
parts are not integrated, the results are boring, and the process is
not completed throughout the company. These three faults create a
deadly waste of company time, money, and talent. While the inten-

tions are good, the results are dismal. That is why traditional plan-
ning appears to have management teams simply going through the
motions over and over again with each yearly plan.
The Piecemeal Approach: No Way to Fit the
Pieces Together
This book gives you all the elements of the business plan and shows
you how to fit them together. Most businesses think they are plan-
ning when in fact they are going about it in a piecemeal fashion.
Company presidents need to see a simple but complete picture that
tells them how to be successful. Everyone needs to understand the
relationship between strategic goals and next week’s tasks.
Employees need to understand the annual targets and how they
apply to their performance. Objectives need to be tied to accounta-
bility and responsibility. In a piecemeal approach I’ve found man-
agement teams that do not understand the interactive relationships
of the parts and pieces of planning.
Introduction
xxix
This book gives you the tools you need for designing a fully
integrated business plan for your company. A business plan is sim-
ple on the one hand yet sophisticated on the other (see Appendix
A). You must be able to present that simplicity and complexity
simultaneously. The picture you create must encompass both the
short- and long-term views. It must be strategic yet contain details
of the daily requirements. The concept must include verification of
where you are today as well as documentation of where you intend
to take the business. Finally, it must serve as a reference tool for
your employees and management as they conduct business.
This book creates a vehicle for bonding among your team.
What better way to become a team than to deal with real business

issues in an orderly, professional fashion? And finally, this book
helps you create a condition for full participation in the plan, not
the traditional “let’s get it over with” attitude. Once you get your
team on the same page, there will be no serious blocks in your plan-
ning process.
The Deflected Focus Approach: Falling Short of
Your Company’s Real Needs
Planning models and theories that approach faddish status usually
prove to fall short of achieving business success. They don’t present
a complete process, resembling more bits and pieces of processes
rather than a unified, logical pathway to the future. They deflect
from the true needs of planners to tell a story in business terms. For
example, hundreds of millions of dollars have been spent on
reengineering efforts, Total Quality Management (TQM), and the
balanced scorecard, all with minimum overall return. These activi-
ties may be good as specific tools, but they cannot substitute for a
completely integrated planning model. Unfortunately, companies
attempt shortcuts with these overpromised tools and get fragment-
ed success. Only by using a complete planning cycle and applying
appropriate tools at appropriate times can you ever achieve the full
force of the business plan.
Introduction
xxx
Introduction
xxxi
T
HE
T
HREE
U

NIQUE
F
EATURES OF
T
HIS
B
OOK
T
HAT
W
ILL
H
ELP
Y
OU
A
CHIEVE
Y
OUR
B
USINESS
P
LAN
G
OALS
There is a fourth option that overcomes the problems with tradi-
tional, piecemeal, or deflected business planning. This planning
process puts energy and emotion back into the company. It ener-
gizes the workforce by tapping into employees’ purpose and
passion. The model encourages the use of intellectual capital and

promotes the empowerment of people to take responsibility for
accomplishing agreed-on, realistic goals. The planning process
forces examination of how work is done with the idea of eliminat-
ing unnecessary and wasted efforts that translate to lost profits.
This book will help you find a sensible starting point, illustrate
the value of the parts and pieces of an integrated planning model,
and build a case so logical that you cannot avoid writing a business
plan. I’m going to be appealing to your most basic business sense
and show you how to be successful in setting goals and reaching
your vision.
Your Management Story
This book centers on your management story. I like the concept of
story because it conveys meaning in the simplest possible way. We
live, love, and entertain through storytelling. Today you may have
bits and pieces of the story, but is it believable, consistent, and
authentic? Is the story being told in a way that your employees
understand, buy into, and implement with minimum loss of work
effort? A central message throughout this book is the need to have
all the parts and pieces connected in such a way that they reinforce
each other. In short, they must hang together in a way that forms
a story of hope, passion, and opportunity for success.