The Beauty of a One Page Plan
Posted by AndyM on December 10, 2009 under Business Growth | 
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“If I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter” is a quotation from T.S. Eliot. I agree that it is hard to boil down big ideas and concepts into brief statements. But the process is so valuable. Not only that, the output is exponentially more valuable the shorter it gets.
You can’t tack a 3″ binder to the company bulletin board, or review it with your team in your monthly meetings. That would be about as feasible as lugging your desktop computer on to BART just so you could keep an eye on email during your 45 minute commute. You wouldn’t do that — that’s what PDAs are for.
Having a concise way to articulate your business vision, mission, goals and plans brings your strategy into the everyday work life of you and your team. How cool is that? What good is documenting your strategy and translating it into plans if it only gets looked at once a year?
I have become a huge fan of the One Page Business Plan. While I am not affiliated with the organziation, there are good examples to work from on their web site [Sample Plans].
Andee Sellman, One Sherpa said,
I agree with your sentiments Andy.
If you can get it on one page then its likely to be read more than once.
By the way we have a new product coming up in 2010 which takes three of the measures off The Financial Fence and puts them into something we’re calling the One Minute Business Checkup. It’s even faster than a one page business plan and is designed to let someone check out their business model in less than a minute from seven easy questions.
Send me an email if you’d like to have a look at the beta version
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