Miriam creeped into the conference so as not to disturb the rest of the meeting. Everyone was working hard on their business plan for 2007. “I’m having a bit of trouble,” she said. “I know all the steps for the plan, but I am just stuck.”

“And step one is what?” I asked. We were working with a structured planning model.

“Step one is to create the vision for my department. And that was easy. I think I got it all captured in a couple of sentences. It’s the rest of the plan that I am having difficulty with.”

“Interesting,” I replied, “that you can capture that much detail in two sentences.”

“Well, you are right,” Miriam confessed. “There isn’t a lot of detail, but I thought it would be better if it was short.”

“Miriam, here is the way the vision part of the plan works. The more detailed it is, the clearer the images are, the easier it is to write the rest of the plan. Instead of two sentences, write two pages. I want to know who your customers are and what services you provide. You probably have more than one customer segment, tell me how they are different and how your services to each are different? Tell me what position you hold in the marketplace, what your market share is? Who are your competitors? Tell me what your competitive advantage is, what are your core competencies? Who are your key personnel, how do you find them, how do you grow them? Tell me about your facilities, your plant? How do you control quality? How do you guarantee performance?”

Miriam left the room with a bit of thinking to do. A couple of days later, I read her vision statement. It contained all the detail we talked about and more. The plan that followed was clear and detailed, all driven by a carefully constructed word picture of the future.

The first step in the plan is vision. -TF

“But, I thought, to do planning, the first step was to create some goals?” asked Nicole. “That’s what we have always done.”

I nodded. “That’s where most people start. And goals are important.” I stopped. “And, how do we make sure we are going after the right goals? And how do we make sure the targets are set high enough?”

“Well, we have to have a good idea of where we are going,” Nicole replied.

“Exactly, and that is what we have to define first.”

Nicole winced. “How do we do that?”

“There are a number of ways. We could take a picture, draw a picture, describe a picture of where we are going?”

“What do you mean?”

“One of my clients, Banyan Air Services at Fort Lauderdale Executive Airport just finished a brand new terminal building, something, as a team, they have been working toward as long as I have known them. For years, hanging on the wall, there was an artist’s rendering of their new building. That was it. That was the vision. And everyone who walked by or sat in that office knew precisely where the company was headed.

“Year after year, without wavering, that picture stood inside the heads of the management team. It drove them to perform with that single thought in mind. Two weeks ago, they had their grand opening. It is amazing how that single visual picture drove their thinking, their performance, their goals for well over a decade.

“The first step in planning is vision.” -TF

“So, we can put this plan to bed?” said Ross. His team had worked hard and done a pretty good job.

“Ross, let’s say you think this plan is the perfect plan. How will you know this is the perfect plan?”

“Since this is the plan for 2007, I guess we won’t know until the end of 2007.”

“So, you are going to wait until the end of 2007 to make sure you know you are still on the right track?” I asked.

“Well, of course not. That would be stupid,” said Ross. We will be looking at the plan all through the year.”

“When will you look at the plan again?” I asked. “Ross, every company has grand intentions to look at their plan through the year, but quite frankly, most companies don’t do it.”

“Well, I am sure we will look at it again,” Ross stated firmly.

“Well, I am sure that you won’t,” I replied. “Unless.” I stopped.

“Unless what?” Ross asked.

“Unless, at the end of each calendar quarter, you schedule a full day with your management team, fully focused, perhaps off-site, to revisit your plan from top to bottom.”

Ross was a quick study. He was already reaching for his calendar. -TF

“Nice plan, well-thought out. Conceptually, it makes a lot of sense. What’s next?”

I spend a lot of time at this point in the year, helping companies develop their 2007 business plan. There is no magic to the process. I use a simple model that we teach in our management program.

“What’s next?” I ask again. Ross was thinking. “In what way could you make this plan more effective?”

Finally, Ross spoke up. “Well, we have done a pretty good job of talking about what we want to accomplish, but we haven’t said much about how we are going to do it.”

“So, what might you add to this plan?”

“Action steps?”

“Exactly, it’s all well and good to establish your goals, but you also have to have an action plan. A plan without action just sits on the shelf gathering dust. In fact, that’s what happens with most strategic plans, they just sit there.”

“So, where do we start?” asked Ross.

“At the beginning, of course. That’s why I asked, –what’s next-? Whenever I look at a strategic plan, I always want to know what the next steps are. Next steps convert the plan into action.” -TF

“Hey, you! They didn’t care who I was.” Peter explained. I was talking with Peter Schutz, former CEO of Porsche (1980-1988) about car racing. But Peter’s stories always have a point.

Standing in the pit, as the car would come in for fuel and tires, there was no pleasant conversation. All energy was focused on the flawless execution of the fundamentals. They had mere seconds to get the racecar out of the pit and back on to the track.

“Can you imagine,” Peter explained, “what would have happened if the guy working on the left rear tire had pulled the wheel, set it on the ground and then started a conversation. -You know guys, I have been thinking about a few things that I would like to bring up to the group.-”

Peter continued to explain that winning the race depended on the dynamics of a rather stern dictatorship. “How is that possible?” Peter asked. The answer was simple. They could operate like a dictatorship in the pit, in the heat of the moment, because they had spent months planning very democratically.

Execute like a dictatorship, plan democratically.

“The problem in business,” Peter said, “is that most managers get this exactly backward.” -TF

You can get Peter’s book Driving Force on Amazon.com.

I had dinner with Peter Schutz the other night. Peter was the CEO of Porsche from 1980-1988. He helped me kick off one of my executive groups in 1996. I hadn’t worked with Peter since 2001, but Peter is the kind of person, you immediately feel like he has been your best friend all your life.

He was talking about the difference between the democratic process and a dictatorship. Funny, even as CEO of Porsche, when he was in the pit at a race like Le Mans, if he got in the way or his assistance was needed to grab a tire or a wrench, the orders were barked and by golly, he complied. He didn’t just comply. He enthusiastically grabbed the tire and delivered it portside to the car, and just in time, because there wasn’t any time to waste.

Was the action in the pit a democracy or a dictatorship?

The answer, tomorrow. What do you think? -TF

Rory sat at his desk, an adding machine with paper tape streaming down to the floor.

“What’s up?” I said, trying to break his concentration.

“Oh, man. I have to put a budget together. I’ve never had to do this before. I don’t even know where to start.”

“Where does any plan start?” I asked.

“In class, you said we should always start with vision, painting a vivid picture of the future, but this is a budget. This is all numbers.” Rory was bordering on whining.

“You still start at the same place,” I said. “The first step is visualization. You have to imagine all the colorful detail, the smell of the room, the focus of light, the heat of the moment. It is only when you have a very clear picture of the future that you will remember all of the detail for all the things that need to go into the budget.”

The wheels were already turning. I was losing Rory in his own imagination. His eyes were tracing images of this picture inside his mind.

“The more detail in your vision, the more likely you will imagine the resources required to create that picture.” I backed out of the room. Rory was on his way.

Marion put the final touches on her plan for 2007. Impressive, detailed, some 10 pages in length.

“Brilliant!” I exclaimed, with all the enthusiasm of a Guinness commercial. “Very articulate. How long did it take for your team to put this together?”

Marion sat up with pride, “Why, thank you, but I have to take most of the credit. I worked over the weekend. I mean, I am sure that some of the ideas came from my team, I mean, if I had asked them, I am sure they would agree with most of the plan.”

“So, has your team seen this plan, yet?” I asked.

“No, we’re under a pretty tight deadline. I didn’t want to bother them.”

“So, exactly when do you want to take the time for your team to talk about it?”

“Well, you know my team, once they start talking about it, they will spend all day.”

“So, exactly when do you want to take the day for your team to talk about it?”

“Well, we really don’t have that kind of time, just talking about it, you know?”

I nodded in agreement. “I know you don’t have the time to spend, but you will spend it nonetheless. My question is when do you want to spend it?”

“What do you mean?” Marion asked.

“I mean, do you want to spend time talking about the plan when you are planning or when you are in the middle of a crunch-tight deadline for your customer?

“Here’s the story, Marion. Your team will participate in the thinking that goes into this plan. They decide that. All you get to decide is when. You can decide for them to participate on the front end, or they will decide to participate on the back end.” -TF

We were six hours into the planning session. We had covered a lot of territory, lots of flipchart pages on the wall. Several items had emerged in three areas that were deemed important by the group. The ideas were good, but I still wasn’t happy.

Gordon had been quiet most of the afternoon, but as we circled the table for comments, he wasn’t shy. “I will be very interested to see how you take all of these ideas and turn them into something we can work with,” he said.

My heart skipped a beat. I had seen many planning sessions get stuck at exactly this point. There were lots of good ideas recorded on the wall, but in the end, what would come of those ideas? Gordon was serious because he had seen it, too. Lots of energy, high fives, but few results.

I took Gordon’s curiosity, not as a challenge, but as permission to move to the next step. This group wanted to make some things happen, but without some very specific work, all this planning would be wasted.

“Q-tips,” I said, reaching in my pocket. I pulled out a handful of the cotton tipped swabs and tossed them on the table. “The next step is Q-tips. For each idea that you are serious about, we simply have to define the Q-tip. We have to define the Quantity, the Quality and the Time period. QQT.” -TF

“We have to find a purpose that has us?” Rachel was confused. “I’m not sure I understand. We are trying to do strategic planning for 2007. I get that we have to define our purpose. I know that purpose will drive the rest of the plan. But you make it sound like that purpose has to be some powerful compelling force. We bake bread.”

“Exactly!” I said. “What kind of bread do you bake?”

“Well, we bake all kinds of bread.”

“So, why do you bake bread?”

“I don’t understand.” Rachel’s head was moving from side to side. She wasn’t disagreeing, but she was having difficulty with the question.

“Why do you bake bread?” I repeated.

“Because our customers buy it.”

“And, why do your customers buy it?”

“Well, bread is consumed at almost every meal in some form or another. People eat a lot of bread. It’s a comfort food.” Rachel was trying.

“Why is bread so important to people?”

“It’s just part of life, bread goes with everything. It’s universal. Around the world, all cultures eat bread. When people get together, they break bread. It’s almost a bond between people.”

“And do you bake quality bread?” I asked.

“The best,” Rachel smiled. “Hot out of the oven, warm, soft, drizzle a little honey on it, just the smell of it makes you feel good.”

“Rachel, you are on the right track. Somewhere in what you describe is purpose. Somewhere in there is vision. Somewhere in there is mission.”

“It’s funny you should say that,” she said. “In the hallway is our mission statement, only it’s just a picture, of a steaming loaf of bread emerging from an oven door.”

What is your company’s mission? If you were to take a picture, what would it be a picture of? Post a comment below. -TF