So often an owner is too busy working in the business to work on the business, and a strategic growth plan is one of the first things to get lost in the shuffle. It just takes too long to get all the pieces together: vision statement, mission statement, values, objectives, strategies and priorities. Who has time to do all that?
Just about anyone, it turns out, if they are prepared to accept a quick and dirty version rather than waiting for a near-mythical polished version. Joe Calhoon’s book, The 1 Hour Plan for Growth, lays out an easy-to-follow process for starting with the big picture and working down to priorities that can be implemented in the next few weeks, all in an hour or two.
Much of the trick in creating these statements so quickly is that Calhoon creates fill-in-the-blank templates that avoid the need to get complicated or spend a lot of time wordsmithing. The mission statement you have after going through his process may not be ready to put on company t-shirts, but it should be good enough to help you move forward to the next step.
The goal of all this filling in of blanks is to get great ideas out of the owner’s head and onto paper so that everyone can understand it and start implementing it. The process helps focus everyone’s attention on the next one or two things that need to be done to let the company get to the next step in its growth. Sounds like a pretty good return for an hour or so of work.
Thanks to Todd Daniels of MMEC for a great presentation.