You have an idea, and you need a plan! Now let's have some fun!!!
You're in charge, and it's your job to land this initiative. Knowing that everyone is on board with your idea helps your confidence and confirms that you're on the right track. Your team looks to you for leadership and has faith that you can create a plan and fuse the group into a powerful engine that supports your cause---NO PRESSURE, RIGHT?
It's natural to think that creating a plan is a giant, daunting task. You believe it will require complex templates, closing for a day of meetings, traveling to an expensive retreat, or (my least favorite) one of those five-hour Board meetings where you attempt to "hammer it out" and instead just put everyone to sleep. Time is money, and it makes no sense in wasting both when you can gather the salient information, organize it, and create a plan that conveys the vital information.
Some of the best plans I have seen are 1-3 pages. They are hard-hitting, the facts speak for themselves, and the detail resides outside the plan so the audience can digest the strategy or product, without all the clutter. The worst plans I have seen usually start with an idea and then get turned into fifty PowerPoint slides with a size five font that makes your eyes bleed.
Give yourself a break and have fun taking your idea to fruition. Writing a plan is a matter of making your case and presenting it in the right form and relevant to your audience. It's not much different than public speaking--it's the same message, just written!
Below are a couple of examples of tools I have used to write plans for various organizations.
Whatever you need, I can find the right tool and help you create your plan, with your brand and bring your concept to reality.
Planning tools
Here is a sample of an A3 map that projects growth opportunities in a market. In this case, one page of information was sufficient to get a consensus on the question of "where do we want to be in five years?"
The Quality of Life and Growth success metrics were the key to consensus! The demographic information supported the assumption that there was sufficient room for growth.
One page and the
Calm and consumer-facing. This is the cover of a business plan for a cutting edge regenerative medicine company.
The plan was formal and complex, (and while I cannot share the secret sauce) the audience was confident that the business plan had captured the flavor of the company as a solid business and consumer-facing.
My point in showing this cover page is a reminder of the importance to tailor
When I refer to using LEAN techniques in planning, this is an example of a Value Stream Map. The map depicts the process and cycle times for one diabetic patient to schedule an appointment with their physician and move through the clinic.
The idea is to map the flow, strip out all the waste, and THEN write the plan without all the white noise and unnecessary resources.
This technique saved t