How to Write the Ultimate 1 Page Strategic Business Plan is a free online course about planning. It is not about developing a business plan in the traditional sense.
This is a top-down planning process. It begins with a 3-year vision. The scope is then tightened to the next 12 months. You develop goals to work toward that 12-month objective. Then key actions are identified for each goal. Then the next 90 days are planned, choosing from your key actions. Finally, the chosen actions are mapped to the next 12 weeks, giving you an operating plan to execute.
Does this summary spoil the course? No. If this planning process sounds useful, and I believe it is, you should take the course for three reasons:
- The course includes a template to develop your own plan, which is used in the lectures.
- The lectures cover the material in more depth than this summary.
- The instructor’s delivery is crisp, friendly, and motivating.
Right now you might have a passing interest in this planning process. After taking the course, you will be excited to put these 8 steps into practice.
1. What is Your 3-year Vision?
Where do you want to be in three years? Where do you want your business to be? Ask yourself specific questions to build your vision. How big is your office? What kind of lifestyle do you have?
When you have a clear picture of that vision, condense it down to a one-sentence vision statement. This is your guiding beacon. The direction you are headed for the rest of the planning process.
2. What is Your 12-month Vision to Step Toward Your 3-year Vision?
The road to your three-year vision must be built, inch by inch, every day. But the three year vision is too broad to convert to action. Too far away. So the next step is to break down that vision to a shorter time table.
What can you do over the next year that will start building momentum toward that three year vision? This is your 12-month vision.
3. What stage is your business in right now?
In addition to knowing where you want to go, it is important to take stock of where you are at right now. This course suggests that your business is built up through 4 levels. You must implement, complete, or master the current level before moving up.
Looking at the course template and following the lecture, decide your current level. The answer will help inform the goals you set to move from where you are to where you want to go.
4. Set Concrete Goals
Knowing where you are and where you want to go, the fourth step is to set concrete goals that will move you in the direction you want to go. The course suggests a number of categories to pick from, such as Business, Sales, Marketing, and Personal Development.
5. Identify Key Actions to Accomplish Those Goals
For each goal, think about the steps it takes to accomplish that goal. Some steps will be big. Others will feel mechanical, administrative; generally lower impact, even though necessary.
Without regard for how you will perform the actions, just write down those big, important steps you know it will take to reach each goal. These are your Key Actions.
6. Perform an ALOE (aka SWOT) Evaluation
You now have a picture of where you are currently. You have a vision. And you have a set of goals, along with key actions to achieve those goals.
The sixth step is to evaluate yourself, your circumstances and your situation, to assess the ALOE (aka SWOT) factors.
- Advantages – your unique talents, relationships, etc…
- Limiting Factors – obstacles that could trip you up or derail you
- Opportunities – situations that come up, which you could leverage
- Emergencies/Threats – temporary circumstances or events that could be problems
For each of these factors/categories, come up with a plan for how you could use it, in the case of Advantages and Opportunities, or how to mitigate or minimize it, in the case of Limiting Factors and Emergencies.
7. Develop Your 90-day Plan of Action
You now have everything necessary to create a plan for the next 90 days. This list should precipitate out of your earlier work, coming mostly from your list of Key Actions.
Pick 3-5 actions from your list. For each action, identify 2-3 steps that will be necessary to complete the action, or move it forward. Then move on to the final step.
8. Create Your Weekly Success Routine
The final step in the planning process is to map your action steps to a weekly task list for the next 12 weeks (90 days). If you picked 5 key actions and 2-3 steps per action, you should now have about 15 total steps to take. This means you really only need to complete 1-2 steps per week!
You know exactly what to focus on with this plan. More importantly, you know why you want to focus on these specific steps and actions. This is a powerful motivator.
Track your progress at the end of each week during the quarter. Review what you accomplished, adjust as necessary, and keep going.
Conclusion
The 8-step planning process here is not revolutionary. It is fundamental. And as my Dad is always fond of saying, if you want to succeed, you gotta master the fundamentals. If, like me, you already do some planning, I believe you will find useful information in these lectures to reinforce those fundamentals and help stay on track.
In addition to the core content, the course also includes a bonus lecture that discusses 7 ways to stay focused on completing your highest value tasks. I will not cover it in this summary, but it is worth watching. I also included information from it in my course notes, which you can download below.
The crisp, focused delivery, fundamental material, and useful worksheet make this course a high value task for you to complete.
