How hard is it for the people in your organization to understand your business execution plan? Do you actually have it documented in a share-able format? Creating a business execution plan that everyone in your organization can understand is challenging; but it is absolutely necessary! As leaders if we expect our organization to help us achieve our vision, then we owe them a clear and understandable plan of how to get there. Easier said than done.
The vast majority of business execution plans that I review as a consultant are fabulously written, full of excessive detail and responsibility assignments, and utterly un-understandable to the average execution worker. From unachievable, misrepresented goals like “Drive product adoption” to pages and pages of market trend dynamics, too many business execution plans are created for the people who wrote them instead of the people who are supposed to execute them. They are often too long, not organized in a way that makes sense to the tactical worker, and too vague on how the various organizational goals are connected.
If we expect people to conduct their day-to-day activities with the passion of achieving our higher level strategies, then we have to provide them a business plan format that is easy to read, easy to understand, and easy to remember. We need to provide them a plan that easily shows how their activities and efforts are contributing to the bigger picture within the organization. We need to give them a “map”.