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O P I N I O N
Five-point improvement
Successful business planning isn’t about having a crystal ball. It’s about a culture that discusses goals, actions, and results on an open and regular basis.
T he end of one year and the beginning of a new one is the season of preparation. We prepare to close out the year, report results, and then get ready to launch into a newer – and improved – version of the prior year. The business planning process can be a real headache to leaders of business units who don’t get to take a break to develop their plans while hitting various year-end deadlines. And, the business planning process can feel totally fake to the unit leader if they make the plan, then it gets changed by others around them without their buy-in, and ultimately the leader is supposed to be held accountable to goals that they didn’t set and don’t particularly believe are attainable.
Jamie Claire Kiser
To achieve success in business planning – which means not just hitting targets, but also learning from misses and wins alike – there are frequent areas for improvement that we recommend: 1)The shorter, the better. Too often, we see 50-page business plans that end up saying very little in terms of actionable concepts and big-picture ideas. A busi- ness plan should come down to what the business unit did last year, what the unit plans to do next year, what will drive next year’s performance in terms of client types, marketing/business develop-
ment efforts, and staffing/training needs, and what steps will be required to get there. And, the plan should be as short as possible to address these areas. 2)One leader of the business unit, one author of the business plan. Let leaders of respective areas develop every part of their business plan. Too often, we see budgets, hiring plans, market analysis, and other critical aspects of a business unit’s plan out- sourced to different areas of the firm – finance, HR, and marketing/business development. The leader of
See JAMIE CLAIRE KISER, page 4
THE ZWEIG LETTER January 15, 2018, ISSUE 1231
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