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What do Halloween and Business Plans have in common?

Writer's picture: Thorsten RungeThorsten Runge




As if Halloween wasn’t scary enough, it’s also business planning season.

Whether the plan is to grow or whether it’s “just” about getting back on track; the plan needs to be actionable, and it, well obviously, needs to work.

If you have mastered this perfectly in previous planning cycles, then no need to read on, save yourself 5 minutes, and get on with your business plan.

If not, then you may want to read on because I have some answers.

Whilst ‘actionable’ and ‘work’ are the most obvious expectations on a plan; that is exactly where many plans fail.

Unless #strategy, market intelligence, #USP, UBP, #KPIs, #OKRs, etc., etc. are all clearly defined AND synced up between the different functions of a business AND there is one owner (only one!) for each goal, the plan isn’t actionable and, therefore, it won’t work.

So, is your OKR really an OKR or is it just a number?

Do your KPIs actually drive #business #results, and can you actually measure them?

Are your owners really owners or just someone who has been made responsible? Responsibility and real ownership are not the same.

Have your sales team, operations, finance, HR actually synced up?

No, I don’t mean whether they have they agreed; does the operational KPI drive, e.g. a finance KPI and does the financial plan allow executing on the operational KPI?

Unless the business plan is a top-down plan (i.e. the senior management team have come up with all the answers – hmmm) putting the plan together will draw heavily on the time of hands-on operational staff and whilst nearing year end and scrambling to reach those last few goals of the current business plan.

Challenging!

Not new, and for some businesses this is a super challenging time of year.

There is, of course, an abundance of “help” available on the internet:

Business plan templates. Useful rating 10%. It will just tell you what to put where in a document, but it will not help with making the ‘what’ any good.

Business plan writing. Useful rating 5%. (Do you really expect someone external understands your business in 5 minutes…)

#AI generated business plans. Useful rating 0%. Oh, come on, really? AI just isn’t there yet. I’ve tested it and my logistics-oriented inputs produced a plan that looked like the plan for ‘Generic Ltd’ / ‘Allgemein GmbH’.

Here comes the GOOD NEWS though (you’ve already guessed it but I’m serious!):

If you think you need some help, be that a lot or a little, reach out.

No template, no AI, no writing; “just” 20 years’ worth of business planning experience. Most of them worked and the ones that didn’t, I learned from…

So, whether you need just a sparring partner for your plan, someone who can sort KPI from OKR, ownership from mere responsibility or, someone who can go really deep.

I can help you make your plan actionable and work!

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