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21st Century Leadership and The One Page Business Plan

Written by: Jim Horan

Article Overview: We believe one of the major oversights in business in the last 30 years is the failure of management to ask the average manager, professional and/or employee to WRITE a plan for their job, department, project, program, and/or their function. Sr. executives have always been required to write "strategic plans" albeit they have not always done an excellent job, they were required to write a plan.

21st Century Leadership and The One Page Business Plan

We believe one of the major oversights in business in the last 30 years is the failure of management to ask the average manager, professional and/or employee to WRITE a plan for their job, department, project, program, and/or their function. Sr. executives have always been required to write "strategic plans" albeit they have not always done an excellent job, they were required to write a plan.

At the One Page Business Plan Company we believe one of the keys for success in the 21st Century is to fully involve and then develop the entire workforce. In the 1980's, and 1990's lots of "new management and team management" processes were developed and implemented with at best, modest successes. We believe the obvious was missed, nobody consistently asked the average manager, professional or employee these five questions:

1) What are you building? Describe what your dept, program, project, function, business unit, division, profit center, or company etc will look like in the future? (ie: 1, 3, 5, or 10 years?)

2) What purpose does your dept, program, product, project, function...etc. serve? Who do you serve and what want, need, desire, pain, and/or opportunity do they want solved from you, your organization, your product or service?

3) What will make your dept, program, product.... successful overtime?

4) What is the work that needs to be done?

5) How will you measure success?

These five questions are the foundation of The One Page Business Plan®, a highly innovative approach to planning that was developed fourteen years ago to address the need for a simplified, concise approach to business planning.

Next time you are meeting with one of your managers or direct reports, take a chance and ask them these five questions! Their response will either be a pleasant surprise or alarming! The question will then be, what will you do with their responses? Accept the status quo? Or take steps to rectify the unacceptable?

We believe the future is not only dependent on but requires a significantly higher contribution from the entire workforce. We believe that contribution will come when the average manager, professional and employee is truly invited to fully contribute and then coached along the way until they are successful. Success is not an accident. It always starts with a plan. Good planning requires good thinking and then it must be committed to writing. One cannot write well unless one thinks well! In this new Century we need a committed workforce that thinks and then can act on those thoughts.

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Article Tags: 10 years, 21st century, business unit, concise approach, desire pain, failure, fourteen years, job, management processes, new management, overtime, page business plan, profit center, strategic plans, successes, surprise, team management, workforce



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