Your Corporate Plan is important, but so are your Business Plans!
A Divisional and Branch level Business Plan is not currently a regulatory requirement within the Commonwealth, but this does not mean that they are not important. Such plans are critical to tell an organisation’s complete and sound performance story.
While Corporate Plans are supposed to cover performance measurement from the strategic outcome level, this is often miles away from the work of each branch and team. Ascertaining how an individual or team’s work and performance links to the Corporate Plan requires some serious mental gymnastics.
Develop Your Own Business Plan
Business Plans are designed to bridge this divide, helping teams and individual staff members to establish and understand ‘where do I fit (with my work) into the picture’.
If your organisation doesn’t have Business Plans in place, now is a great time to get started. When you develop Business Plans for your Divisions and Branches, make sure that:
- There is a simple and clear process for Divisions and Branches to follow in establishing Business Plans to ensure a minimum standard and consistent quality in measuring performance across the entire business. In the end, the information captured through the Business plan needs to be useful to measure and report on the performance at the Divisional/Branch level.
- There is clarity about the links and relationships between your Department’s strategic planning documentation, aka the Corporate Plan, and the operational planning document in form of the Business Plan. These documents all need to speak to/be part of the ‘bigger picture’
- Business Plans are subsequently used for managing day-to-day performance, decision-making. Overtime, this will ensure you are telling a meaningful performance story for the Division/Branch.
Your Business Plan Can Be Practical and Effective
Grosvenor can help develop a practical and effective Business Plan for from developing a Business Plan template, comprehensive but easy-to-follow instructions on how to complete a the Plan, fit-for-purpose performance measures and targets, through to efficient reporting mechanisms.
And while you are considering your Business Plan, make sure to read our eBook about Rewriting your Corporate Plan to tell an engaging and clear Performance Story. It provides you with some food for thought as a non-traditional, more creative approach to compromising this strategic planning document that has become for many a mere tick-in-the-box exercise. Or listen to our podcast about writing an engaging Corporate Plan.
Need help writing your Corporate Plan? Contact us or book a meeting.