BACKGROUND

An organisation of about 300 people wanted to develop a more effective business planning process, and a business plan for the future. The five Directors wished to involve the seven other managers who made up the rest of the senior management team, most of whom had, at best, limited experience of developing an overall business plan for an organisation.

Focus

The focus of the assignment was to challenge current thinking and practice at the top level and develop a business planning framework, and the core principles, of a business plan, that would drive the business in the coming years. The intention was to avoid, as far as possible, getting into detailed tactical issues that were not relevant to the whole organisation.

Framework

Two Obsidian consultants were involved in the assignment that consisted of the following

• Four half-day workshops spread over three months.
• A short ‘bulletin’ circulated prior to each workshop that provided an outline of the principles and concepts, and the structure to be adopted in the workshop, and included a few questions that the participants were asked to give thought to prior to the event.
• A summary of each workshop that was circulated to all participants within a few days of the conclusion of each workshop.
• Putting the ideas generated at each workshop into a more ‘organised’ and ‘developed’ format that could be reviewed and discussed at the start of the following workshop.
• Proposals for cascading the overall organisational business plan to the various business areas within the organisation.

Workshops

The format of the workshops was to

• introduce and discuss briefly some core concepts and build on ideas previously generated
• work in small groups on specific questions
• have feedback and discussions on the points each group had developed

A range of different approaches were adopted to stimulate new thinking and challenge existing practice. For example, use was made of the Balanced Scorecard, Scenario Planning, Systems Thinking, as well as Obsidian’s own business planning process to provide a flexible and coherent structure to the project.

Results

At the completion of our involvement the following had been achieved

• The Directors and Senior Managers had a greatly enhanced understanding of the business planning process.
• The organisation had a business planning framework that they could use in the future.
• A business plan for the organisation at the top level had been developed by the Directors and Senior Managers which they all understood, and to which they were all committed.

The business plan contained the following:

• clear statements of the ‘Mission’ and ‘Vision’ of the organisation
• four ‘high level’ goals
• five ‘high level’ strategic approaches
• eight organisational objectives, each with agreed measures and targets
• five key risk factors with an outline of the contingency plans
• Templates had been developed to enable Directors and Senior Managers to adopt a consistent approach to developing the plans for their own business areas that would support the overall organisational business plan.
• Proposals were made to the Managing Director for cascading the plan throughout the organisation.

Note: We had previously worked with the organisation to develop their ‘value statements’ that were incorporated in their performance management process.