How to Make Strategic Plan that Keeps your Employees Focused
Create a Single-Page Strategic Plan to Keep your Employees Focused on What’s Important
Employees are hired to do a job, but sometimes getting them to focus on the most important aspects of the business is a challenge itself. Some are uninterested in work, while others are overwhelmed by all the information and opportunities.
We suggest making a single page strategic plan ground, focus, and align your employees on a daily basis. In Use the Strategic Plan to Focus your Employees on the Vital Few rather than the Trivial Many, we craft a Single-Page Strategic Plan to Avoid the Daily “Sea of Infinity” in two steps:
Step one
“First, engage your employees by creating and promoting a Purpose statement that gets to the core of why your company exists. Not all businesses have a Purpose statement, but many that do have one which is lengthy, not easy to remember, and are typically tucked away in a 30+ page strategic plan that is reviewed and revised annually. The Purpose should get employees excited and passionate about coming to work every day and help them understand more easily how they contribute toward a shared end-game.
3M’s purpose is “To Solve Problems Innovatively”. To promote their Purpose, every employee is given 15% free time to follow their hunch to hatch innovative ideas. Many innovative products, including the famous Post-It Note, have been produced by existing employees because of the 15% time policy.
Creating a well-defined Purpose statement will not only help keep great employees, but it will also start attracting other top talent.”
Step two
“Second, to prevent employees from losing focus because of opportunity overload, leaders should clearly communicate only three to five goals annually. A single page strategic plan includes not only the company Purpose, but also its five-year initiatives and one-year goals. Everything is aligned and can be viewed on one page.
The plan defends your employee’s time allowing them to stay focused and not be easily seduced away and distracted. As the old Chinese proverb says, “Chase two rabbits and both will escape.” One single page plan user says it best. “The three goals give us permission not to pay attention to all of the distractions that are not high priority items…in other words, if it isn’t on the plan, it’s ok to put it on the back burner till later.”