Tài liệu Seven Steps to a Successful Business Plan Chapter 8-9 docx

How to Build a One-Year

Operational Plan That

Improves Performance

I

n this chapter you move from the strategic view to the opera￾tional applications. Here you separate the strategic from the tac￾tical, the global from the specific, and the long term from the short

term. This is where most management energy is focused for execu￾tion.

The 1-Page Strategic Plan generally spells out where you intend

to take the organization while the operational plan defines how

you plan to make the trip. Yet getting to a practical application of a

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CHAPTER

8

business plan seems to always get lost in the planning process.

Earlier you defined the goals, objectives, and tasks necessary to give

you three levels of definitions. Now let’s examine your business

plan up close by defining what must happen next year. This is

called the operational plan (see Figure 8-1). The content for the

plan is developed during the initial planning conference. All the

information for the operational plan can be extracted from the

original planning process. This is mostly true for the other plans as

well. The real task becomes putting the information into the right

portion of the 5-Page Business Plan. In lay language, we call this

“getting it in the right bucket.”

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Figure 8-1. The operational plan sets the direction into motion. It is how

you plan to work the next year.

The operational plan usually extends out one year (see Figure

8-2). It is always the first year of your strategic plan, which auto￾matically makes it the first year of your business plan. Although

some companies elect to use two or three years, one year is more

practical and best fits accepted business reporting standards. One

year fits with the quarterly concepts and the annual budget cycle.

This permits you to look at your performance on a frequent basis

and make annual adjustments if necessary. One year is also about

all the detail you can plan without becoming overwhelmed. Do not

spend a lot of time, if any, trying to develop the details and num￾bers for subsequent years because they will be adjusted as you work

with your plan over its life span.

How to Build a One-Year Operational Plan 213

Figure 8-2. The operational plan is cut out of the total ten years.

SITUATIONAL ANALYSIS: THE BRIDGE BETWEEN

THE STRATEGIC PLAN AND THE OPERATIONAL

PLAN

To get from the strategic view to the operational view you must do

very detailed thinking. Situational analysis is the middle or second

step of the backPlanning process (see Chapter 3), with strategic

thinking and operational execution being the first and third steps,

respectively. At this stage of planning you must do a reality check.

In strategic thinking you examined what you wanted to do in the

long term. Now you must carefully consider what can be done in

the short term in light of the realities of the business environment

in which you must act.

To conduct a good situational analysis, you must consider

eight criteria:

1. Analysis of company performance

a. Current

b. Historical

2. Analysis of competition

3. Analysis of market share

4. Analysis of mission

a. Implied tasks

b. Mission capability

5. Analysis of existing resources

6. Analysis of your business’s drivers—excluding, at this

time, your primary operational focus (i.e., single focus)

7. Analysis of existing structure

8. Analysis of reference information

a. Customer satisfaction survey

b. Employee satisfaction survey

c. Others as identified

Analysis of Company Performance

As part of the planning model you must conduct self-evaluations.

This means taking a hard look at your last year’s performance and

a second look at your overall performance from a historical view.

Usually there is no shortage of charts and graphs depicting how

well you did financially for the past year. The analysis usually

214 Seven Steps to a Successful Business Plan

includes one or more previous years, depending on the size print

and complexity of the chart. It always includes actual performance

against projected performance. Usually these are just numbers

drills.

To be truly effective you need to have some lessons learned.

You need to know why the numbers went up or down. Thought

must be given to why spikes occurred in your performance. A poor

showing cannot be written off as the result of a bad economy or an

unexpected downturn. These are simply excuses for mediocre man￾agement performance.

This analysis is where you start to sort out the serious planning

session from the weekend at the golf resort session. Often managers

are unprepared to talk specifics of the current business situation of

their industry at a planning session. This can only mean these peo￾ple came to the meeting unprepared. At your next planning session

have your principal attendees give a short briefing to the team on

the status of their portion of the business. This can be assigned as

homework in the preconference briefing.

The best team I’ve ever seen do this is Cedarglen Homes in

Calgary. The two principal players really know their business.

Robert Bezemer and Scott Haggins can talk for hours about the back

corners of the industry in Calgary, Alberta, and all of Canada. That

is because they are out every day dealing with the details of what it

takes to run a successful building company. This means they are

doing more than just building houses. Both executives are involved

and have a genuine interest in how their company fits into the

social fabric of the community. They spend a considerable amount

of time with customers, other builders, and the trades. This pays off

with a multiplier effect.

Analysis of Competition

Many planners want to start the initial planning process with a

SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) analysis.

I disagree. While this is critical information to validate the plan￾ning content, it is the wrong starting point. To be creative and bold

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