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Gazelles Approach To Strategic Planning

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Strategic Plan

Gazelles’ One Page Strategic Plan is one of the most popular strategic planning templates available on the market today. Created by Verne Harnish in his book, “Scaling Up: How a Few Companies Make It…and Why the Rest Don’t,” this approach to strategic planning is meant to help businesses simplify their strategic priorities and create a plan that is both actionable and effective for growth.

The 3 Tenets of the ‘One Page Strategic Plan’ Approach to Strategic Planning

Gazelles’ One Page Strategic Plan is designed to help businesses make the decisions that will best support their growth goals. The decisions can be broken down into the following broad categories:

1. Strategic Priorities

Defined as ‘Rocks’, strategic priorities define the actions and the involved stakeholders for the business’s quarterly activities. Executives are asked to complete a Core Values/Beliefs section, as well as a Purpose section, to define the direction of the organization moving forward. Building on this foundation, executives then complete five ‘Rocks,’ or quarterly objectives, and assign an accountable party to each Rock. By limiting executives to five priorities per quarter, the Gazelles system is meant to encourage focus on the largest drivers of organizational growth.

2. Resource Allocation

When it comes to resources, the primary concern is the people necessary to execute the aforementioned Rocks. Executives are tasked with enumerating the people involved with execution, assigning accountable parties to Rocks, and determining the critical number of people necessary to achieve objectives. The purpose of the exercise is for executives to gain insight into the productivity and utilization of their employees. Upon seeing how many employees are aligned with strategic Rocks, and how many are not, executives can reallocate employees to the organization’s highest priority objectives.

3. Financial Viability

Here we explore both the key financial drivers of the organization at large, as well as the financial impact of the organization’s headcount. The One Page Strategic Plan includes current and expected financial metrics from the balance and income sheets, including revenue targets, profit margin, cash, accounts receivable, inventory turnover, and revenue per employee. By listing these financial drivers, executives can correlate the strategic priorities and allocate resources accordingly.

Questions the One Page Strategic Plan Helps Executives Answer

Building on the three themes listed above, Gazelles approach to strategic planning enables executives to explore a collection of key business drivers. These are broken down into organizational timeframes: big picture, three to five years, annual, and quarterly.

Big Picture Questions:

• What is our core mission, and what is our vision moving forward?
• What is our organization’s purpose?
• What are our Big Hairy Audacious Goals? Where will we be in 10 years?

Three to Five Year Questions:

• What are the opportunities and threats in our market?
• What are our priorities over the next three to five years?
• What are our financial targets over the next three to five years?
• What is our brand promise in the market?
• What are our Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for this timeframe?

Annual Questions:

• What are our most critical priorities this year?
• What are our most critical financial numbers this year?
• What are our most critical KPIs (key performance indicators) this year?

Quarterly Questions:

• What are the objectives that everyone needs to be focused on, and accountable to, in our day-to-day operations?

What is truly unique about Gazelles’ One Page Strategic Plan, and that approach to strategic planning, is the focus on growth. With this template, priorities are set with a special focus on the financial resources and the people needed for execution, which is why many people believe Gazelles provides a strategic planning format built specifically for strategy execution. But planning is only as good as the actions that follow, so it is important that once the template is complete, it is placed into an environment that allows for the assignment and tracking of outlined priorities. This is where AchieveIt can help!  Contact us today to see how our business insights platform can help enable the execution of your strategic plan.

About AchieveIt

AchieveIt is the platform that large organizations use to get their biggest, most important initiatives out of the boardroom and into reality. Too many great ideas never quite make it across the finish line, because there’s no real way to keep everyone on course and keep everything on track. What does it take to actually guide these initiatives all the way through to completion? You’ve got to:

• Get everything in view – so you can see what’s happening with every initiative, at every level, from the enterprise to the individual, in real time.
• Get everyone engaged – with an easy-to-use platform that connects your organization from the executive leadership to the project teams, keeping everyone accountable and on the same page.
• Get every possible advantage – not only because you have the premier platform in this space, but because you can draw on the experience and best practices of our execution experts.

That’s why everyone from global corporations , to regional healthcare systems , to federal agencies have turned to AchieveIt for their Integrated Plan Management. Let’s actually do this.

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The Ultimate Guide To Complete A One-Page Strategic Plan – Your Fast-Track To Alignment

The faster my company grows and the more team members we add, the more problems I see pop up around communication and alignment. If you’re running a fast-growing company, I’m positive that you can relate. And at this point you’re probably asking yourself what I used to ask all the time early on in my career: how do I get everyone on the same page and execute smoothly?

Scale your impact and reduce the drama

At Growth Institute, we help mid-market companies do two things: scale their impact and reduce the drama. And we practice what we preach. Being an Inc. 5000 company over the past two years, we understand the challenges fast-growers face and we use the tools that we suggest ourselves too. We know the impact they have – not just in theory but also from our own experience. I got together with Scaling Up coaches Ann Ralston, Jonathon Herps, and Mark Miller to walk through how the OPSP works – and how you can build one to scale up in the next year.  These expert practitioners of the Scaling Up methodology gave a peek into how much thought and attention it takes to fill out the OPSP. Here’s a summary of all the useful knowledge we covered. If you’d like to follow along and take notes, you can download your own OPSP template here .  Important note before you start: don’t beat yourself up if you don’t get it all done in one go. You can iterate. The OPSP is meant to be a living document, not something set in stone.

The OPSP in short 

Who’s gonna do what, by when, and how do we measure that.

The One-Page Strategic Plan contains three main elements in regards to your business: the cards you’re dealt, how you’re gonna play them, and the outcome you expect from your game.  It’s based on the 4 Key Decisions model of Verne Harnish’s Scaling Up methodology, which when done right, helps you laser-focus and scale up. The 4 key decisions are around strategy, people, execution, and cash:

The effectiveness of your strategy is reflected in your growth and revenue. If your strategy is working well, that’s where you can tell. In order to be on track here, you have to be growing at least twice as much as the rest of the industry is doing.

The success you’re having on the people front is reflected in the happiness and freedom found in your team. You need to have fun, help, and respect each other. Are you having a good time with your people? And can you take your annual holiday leave without constantly being interrupted? If so, you’re doing well in this area.

The potency of your execution is reflected in your profitability and the amount of time you spend working. Is your profit less than industry average or do you work 18 hours a day? If yes, you’re having an execution problem.

The problems you may experience is the area of cash are merely symptoms of an underlying “disease” or dysfunction. If you have a problem in any of the other areas, it’s reflected in your cash flow. The One-Page Strategic Plan brings all of these areas together.

How is the OPSP built?

The OPSP consists of three sections:

• At the bottom you find your starting point or foundation, 
• In the middle is what you’re going to build, 
• And on top are results you’re headed towards.
• Your “why” - the starting point or foundation at the bottom plus the values and purpose you’ve got with your company on the left; 
•  Your targets and goals or your “what” on the top and in the middle;
•  Your execution or your “how” on the right.

As we go through the strategic plan section by section, I will summarize the breakdown from the perspective of the three Scaling Up coaches who I ran the workshop with. The core was explained by Jonathan Herps, the “what” was explained by Mark Miller, and Ann Ralston finished us off with her teachings of the “how”. Let's dive in.

The core of the OPSP: your “why”

Explained by jonathan herps.

Defining your core values When you’re defining your company’s core values, a great way to look at it is as if you were a parent: what would be the main things you’d want to impose on your “children?” What are the things they should and shouldn’t do?

Knowing and clearly communicating your values is vital because they will help individual team members make better decisions. Especially when they’re faced with ethical or moral dilemmas. Below you can see a great example of core values by Atlassian:

As Scaling Up coach Jonathan Herps explained during the workshop, it’s essential not to set any of these in stone but to try them on first. Then you can assess which work best and are most critical to your organization and which may need some fine-tuning. 

Your purpose or mission provides the critical why behind everything that you do. It’s the one definitive statement that drives the business. And having a clearly defined purpose matters. A list of the world’s 50 fastest growing brands revealed the effect. Brands that serve a clear purpose experience 400% more profitability than those who don’t. 

Jonathan shared, “For millennials we found it’s particularly important to know what they’re investing their creative energy in. It keeps them sticking around a lot longer.” To articulate your purpose, start by answering these questions: 

• What makes us matter and what would happen if we weren’t there? 
• What difference is our company making in the world?

What are your company’s strengths and weaknesses and the (global) trends?

Although this part of the OPSP seems similar to the traditional SWOT, we invite you to look further than you would with that model. When looking at trends, we’re not just talking about industry or region specific trends. We’re also looking out for global ones. The emergence of certain technologies and various social or political trends are the kinds of global events that might affect your business - so it’s important to keep your eye on them.

To come up with your inherent strengths and weaknesses, focus on what has and what hasn’t been working well in the past and what you’re experiencing right now. When defining your weaknesses, think about the parts that are unlikely to change.

Strategy section part 1 – your “what” 

Explained by mark miller.

Now that you’ve defined your “why” it’s time to define your “what” – the specific long-term, mid-term, and short-term goals you want to hit in order to fulfill your purpose. Here, I will summarize the teachings from Mark Miller.

Your BHAG is your envisioned future. This is where you answer the question of what you want to achieve in the next 10 to 30 years. Your BHAG is your “Mount Everest” or “Northern star” and should be about 70% realistic and 30% unnerving. It needs to be bold enough to stretch the limits of your capabilities.

When setting long term goals, one of the biggest mistakes that I see business leaders make is that they focus only on what they expect is going to change due to their existence. But it’s important to take into consideration what is not going to change as well. To give you an example: a client selling shoes once asked if we could help them increase the amount of stores they  were selling from.  To the client, this seemed like a reasonable goal, however, we strongly advised against pursuing it, unless they’d like to go bankrupt faster.  If your goal is to build more stores, you’re focusing on the process, and not on the underlying never-changing need – in this case: people that want to buy shoes. How people will buy the shoes might change in the future but they will still want shoes. It’s important to consider the consistent need for your BHAG. There are 4 types of BHAGs you can use:  

• the target type, focused around a certain numeric goal, 
• the role model type, e.g. becoming the “Nike” in a different industry than sports clothing, 
• the competitive type, e.g. surpassing your biggest competitor by X, 
• or the transformational BHAG, where you focus on transforming your industry.

Whichever type you choose, it should be aligned with your core purpose. Your BHAG simply wants more of what your purpose states.

In the 3 to 5-year target you will create a quantitative goal, reverse-engineered based on your BHAG. Narrow in and establish what your basecamp looks like if you want to reach your BHAG. 

This is simply defined as the market are in which you are choosing to compete in. Here you are going to briefly describe the core customer ( who and where) and what it is you plan to sell them over your 3 to 5-year target.  In which areas do you want to be #1 in the world in? The sandbox describes exactly what you’re going to serve your customers and helps you get more clear on what you’re going to say “no” to.

Your brand promise is what you want to be known for by your customers. It’s what is going to drive your core customer to you and focuses on their needs, not per se their wants.

Brand promises and brand promise KPIs form the linkage between strategy and execution.

How are you going to differentiate? 

Like Mark suggested in the webinar, it’s a good idea to create one primary and two supporting brand promises. E.g. “speed of installation,” “easy to do business with,” and “results in a week.” 

Key thrusts/capabilities 

Your key thrusts and capabilities affirm and support your market positioning so you can achieve your brand promise KPIs. They are measurable subgoals that help you stay on the right track.

You can also look at them as your medium-term priorities.

Strategy section part 2 – the “how” 

Explained by ann ralston.

In the third section you’re getting even more specific and move from the “what” of your strategy to the “how.” Here, we create the metrics that help us know if we’re on track. In the workshop Ann Ralston helped us understand how we turn our vision into action.

In your 1 year target goal you can set profit goals, impact goals, customer NPS goals or even employee NPS goals, depending on your business. You should define measurable numbers here so you can move easily from strategy to execution.

Key initiatives

In the key initiatives box you fill in the most important 3-5 key initiatives for this year to ensure you reach your 1 year goals. It’s important not to come up with more than 5 initiatives – otherwise you and your team will lose focus. Or as Ann put it: “if you try and do everything, you do 6 or 7 or 8, you probably won’t do a really good job at any one – and you’ll confuse the heck out of your employees.”

Critical numbers

In the critical numbers section you define the leading indicators that show whether you’re on or off-track. Leading indicators are defined in ways that are input and/or action oriented. If you’re reporting on sales numbers for instance, a lagging indicator is the actual amount of sales or revenue. A leading indicator then, could be the number of sales calls per representative or the number of sales emails sent. 

When reporting on critical numbers, use two numbers that balance each other out, otherwise you might get a skewed picture of how your business is doing. 

For example , if you’re reporting on the number of sales calls but neglect the customer satisfaction indicator, you may jump to false conclusions. Although your number of sales might be strongly increasing, your company could still be in danger of going out of business if the new sales approach leads to a strong decrease in customer satisfaction. 

Annual/quarterly theme

The themes are the fun part of the OPSP. This is where you can get creative and select which annual or quarterly themes are considered cause for celebration once you hit them.  And once you hit the goal for your theme, how are you gonna celebrate it with them? Make sure that you visualize the progress along the way and create a scoreboard design sketch.  Coach Ann Ralston gave a great example during the webinar. If the goal for your theme is to hit 1200 customer visits, you can draw a mountain with a flag on top with the number on it. The sketch should give you some ideas on how to create a physical presentation of your progress that will be visible for everyone in the company at all times. Another incredible example of what this can lead to, comes from our client Proof . They used a theme to hit their company’s 50K MRR goal and surpassed it faster than they anticipated. The celebration? A company Tesla. As their founder, Dave Rogenmoser, shared in an interview about their experience with the OPSP :

“We printed this poster of 50K with cars on it and had this big monitor underneath it. And every time we would hit another thousand dollars MRR, we'd add a new line and do a little dance and celebration. It laser focused everyone on this one specific goal.”

The rocks make your goals concrete. If you don’t accomplish them this quarter, you might never hit your annual goals. Need to accomplish a certain big task next quarter that requires a new hire, for instance? Then hiring that one employee could be one of your rocks. As your rocks can not be missed, they’re the most important things to focus on! So get clear on them and make them numerical. 

Accountability

In the accountability section you add names to your KPIs. Who is responsible for which KPI?

This makes it very clear for both individuals and teams what their main focus should be.

Recommendations for optimal implementation of your OPSP

• In large organizations each business unit could have their own OPSP based on the overall company plan. In that case, we recommend that you use software to have it digitized and not have to rely on paper versions alone.
• Once you’ve completed your OPSP, remember to keep it as a living document . The key purpose is better alignment and communication. So look at it frequently. 
• We encourage teams to review their OPSP on a weekly basis to see where they are currently on or off track with their rocks and KPIs. Don’t spend time on the ones that are on track or “in the green.” You can just use this review to talk about the “reds” and “yellows;” the ones that need attention.  
• When you use the OPSP like this, you’re constantly iterating on the processes that make your company really good at what it does. As a result, you and your company are learning faster . This will bring you a huge strategic advantage for 2020.  

3 ways to get guidance with implementing your OPSP

It’s not completed until it’s implemented. Ready to get your entire organization on board? Here are 3 ways to implement your plan in the best way possible:

Buy the book

Buy Verne Harnish’ Scaling Up book for you and your team members and work with the tools and techniques described in detail there.

Get coaching

Get in-house coaching to help you implement the OPSP. You can work with certified coaches like Ann Ralston , Jonathan Herps , Mark Miller or any of our other 150+ partners from around the world that can help you one-on-one or on team-level.

Go for online implementation

If you want to get the most value out of the OPSP and the entire Scaling Up methodology, we encourage to join the Scaling Up Master Business Course .  You will get guidance from Verne Harnish himself and one-on-one coaching with Chuck Kocher to review every single box of your OPSP once you’ve completed it. It also entails interactive masterminds with a small group of business leaders to help each other implement the plan and bounce off ideas. The time investment? In about 3 hours per week for 10-12 weeks you’ll be all set. We’re keeping the groups small to ensure the highest value, so if you’re interested to join the next cohort, learn more today .

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One-Page Strategic Plan Worksheet (OPSP)

Tools / One-Page Strategic Plan Worksheet (OPSP)

A Simple, Comprehsensive tool for Scaling Up Your Business

How do you create your company's vision strategy, and execution plan while capturing it all in one place? Verne Harnish, in his seminal works Scaling Up and Mastering the Rockefeller Habits has captured every important aspect of the 4 Decisions framework in one document: The One-Page Strategic Plan or OPSP.

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ONE-PAGE STRATEGIC PLAN: HOW TO COMPLETE by ... - Gazelles

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<strong>ONE</strong>-<strong>PAGE</strong> <strong>STRATEGIC</strong> <strong>PLAN</strong>:<br />

<strong>HOW</strong> <strong>TO</strong> <strong>COMPLETE</strong><br />

<strong>by</strong> Verne Harnish<br />

BEFORE GETTING STARTED – Bullet Points:<br />

VISION – A DREAM WITH A <strong>PLAN</strong> – Most people don’t have visions, they have<br />

dreams. The one-page planning document guides you to answer 7 simple questions<br />

around your dream – Who, What, When, Where, How, Why and the always difficult<br />

“but Should we or Shouldn’t we” You’ll see these anchor questions at the top of each<br />

column of the one-page planning document and bolded below to provide you a verbal<br />

and visual clue to match the “how to” sections with the appropriate columns on the form.<br />

TWO OVERARCHING IDEAS – Alignment and Simplicity. The one-page planning<br />

document is designed to encourage simplicity (there’s not a lot of space to write, so you<br />

must be concise and focused) and alignment (think of the document as a crossword<br />

puzzle, where figuratively“4 down” needs to align with “7 across.”).<br />

FOUR KEY DECISIONS – Essentially the “bottom lines” of the form:<br />

1) Getting the Right People (aligned with the Core Values and Purpose)<br />

2) Long Term Goal – BHAG<br />

3) Strategy – Brand Promises and X Factor<br />

4) Short Term Focus – Critical Number(s) for the year and each quarter<br />

If you get these decisions right, everything else falls into place much easier. And you’ll<br />

likely dominate your industry, have three to five times industry average profitability,<br />

have a lot of cash, and will grow revenues at twice the industry average. In addition,<br />

customers and employees will be attracted to your business.<br />

DOWNLOAD <strong>PLAN</strong>NING DOCUMENT -- You can download an English, French, or<br />

Spanish Word editable one-page planning document at www.gazelles.com – click on the<br />

download forms link next to the picture of “Mastering the Rockefeller Habits” or the<br />

“One-Page Strategy Plan” link under the <strong>Gazelles</strong> Featured Downloads heading on the<br />

home page. There are two versions:<br />

1) The original one-page plan<br />

2) A modified plan that provides a listing for all four quarters on the right hand side<br />

of the document and the theme and personal priorities on the back side.<br />

REPLACE LOGO – feel free to take all references to <strong>Gazelles</strong> off the document, except<br />

the copyright, and replace with your own logo and company information.<br />

REPLACE HEADINGS – call them Core Values, Core Purpose, Brand Promise, Rocks,<br />

etc. OR NOT!!! Feel free to come up with your own unique language within the firm.<br />

HP calls their core values the HP Way. Some prefer the term Principles or Guidelines<br />

instead of Core Values. Some people find the term “Rocks,” as a label for quarterly<br />

priorities, awkward. Again, it’s up to you. The document is meant to serve as a<br />

guideline.<br />

USE BLANK DOCUMENTS – there’s a tendency to provide people with completed or<br />

semi-completed one-page plans during planning sessions. I highly suggest you pass out<br />

blank plans at the beginning of the session and have everyone fill them in <strong>by</strong> hand –<br />

there’s something about re-writing the core values, purpose, BHAG, etc. each quarter that<br />

helps hardwire them into your brain and better connects each person to what is said and<br />

decided. Besides, there’s not that much to write!<br />

PROJECT UP ON A SCREEN – to facilitate the process, use an LCD projector and<br />

display the document up on a large screen. Designate someone to fill it in electronically<br />

so it can be immediately emailed to all the participants – and it facilitates everyone filling<br />

in their own documents <strong>by</strong> hand when they can see it up on the screen.<br />

QUARTERLY vs. ANNUAL (timing and agendas) – the annual planning session is<br />

typically two days and the quarterly planning session one day. The first half of each<br />

planning session (day 1 of the annual, morning of the quarterly) is spent reviewing the<br />

Opportunities and Threats and the first three columns. The second half (day 2 of the<br />

annual, afternoon of the quarterly) is spent on the 1 year column and then entire right<br />

hand page of the One Page Strategic Planning document. And with both planning<br />

sessions, I recommend the executive team have dinner together and then meet for a<br />

couple hours the night before the start of the planning session. This allows for the normal<br />

“catching up” to occur and provides a more informal setting to begin discussing longer<br />

range Threats and Opportunities and recall stories from the last quarter where the<br />

company “lived” its core values. It also gives the team an extra night to sleep on the<br />

conversations generated that evening.<br />

PREPARATION:<br />

1) SCAN MY BOOK – Have the executive team scan through my book “Mastering<br />

the Rockefeller Habits.” It will provide specific context for many of the items on<br />

the One Page Strategic Planning document. You can order autographed copies<br />

for your executive team at www.gazelles.com – just include their first names in<br />

the comments column on the order form and any message you would like me to<br />

convey (or I’ll add my own standard comments). The book is also available on<br />

Amazon.com.<br />

2) READ COLLINS’ ARTICLE -- Have everyone re-read Jim Collins’ HBR article<br />

“Building a Company Vision” – download for $6 at www.hbr.com – at least do<br />

this the first few annual planning sessions until you’re comfortable with your<br />

Core Values, Core Purpose, and BHAG – the first two columns of the one-page<br />

document. Also download and read “Turning Goals Into Results: The Power of<br />

Catalytic Mechanisms.” It’s also available at www.hbr.com for $6. And you can<br />

go to www.jimcollins.com and download many of his other articles for free and<br />

he has several free interactive tutorials to help discover Core Values, Purpose,<br />

BHAG, etc. – I would read everything Jim has written!<br />

3) READ SELECT ARTICLES – Go to www.gazelles.com and click on Articles<br />

under the Resources dropdown menu at the top of the home page. You’ll see<br />

several short articles I’ve written that will be helpful in the planning process –<br />

pick those that align with the issues facing the firm whether its sales, marketing,<br />

picking Brand Promises, etc.<br />

4) EMPLOYEE SURVEY -- A few weeks prior, conduct an employee survey. Their<br />

insights are often helpful in determining the quarterly or annual theme and<br />

Critical numbers since they are closer to the customers and are immersed in the<br />

daily processes of the business. Many firms are using zoomerang.com to make it<br />

easier to administer. I suggest three simple questions:<br />

a. What should (enter company name) Start doing<br />

b. What should (enter company name) Stop doing<br />

c. What should (enter company name) Keep doing<br />

Alternatives include the sample employee questionnaires in the “Rockefeller<br />

Habits” workbook (used at the two-day workshop for those that have attended) or<br />

some modification of the 12 questions in the book “First Break All the Rules” <strong>by</strong><br />

Marcus Buckingham – a book definitely worth reading if you have over 25<br />

employees. The 12 questions asked of your employees determine if they feel<br />

they have effective leaders.<br />

5) CUS<strong>TO</strong>MER FEEDBACK – Along with employee feedback, formally gather<br />

customer feedback. It’s best if this has been happening throughout the year, but<br />

making a concerted effort to have every executive call a few customers and get<br />

their feedback before the planning session can provide useful insights going into<br />

the planning session.<br />

6) <strong>TO</strong>P THREE ISSUES -- Send out an email to those attending the planning<br />

session to ask them to email back “the top three issues they feel MUST be<br />

addressed/explored/answered at the upcoming planning session.” Compile these<br />

for review at the beginning of the planning session or just prior.<br />

7) (OPTIONAL) SWOT ANALYSIS – conduct a separate Strengths, Weaknesses,<br />

Opportunities, and Threats (SWOT) exercise prior to the planning session – often<br />

you can send out an email to your executive team seeking their input – again,<br />

compile for use in the planning session.<br />

WARNING: DON’T MOVE <strong>TO</strong>O QUICKLY THROUGH THE FIRST 2 or 3<br />

COLUMNS of the planning document. There is a tendency in planning sessions to rush<br />

through the Opportunities & Threats section in the upper right hand corner and the first<br />

two or three columns of the planning document (Core Values, Core Purpose, BHAG,<br />

Sandbox, Smart Numbers, and Brand Promise/Strategic Anchors), especially after the<br />

team feels like they’ve nailed down the answers in previous sessions. Re-centering the<br />

team quarterly and annually is the key to making sure the quarterly and annual decisions<br />

are the best they can be. “When I go slow, I go fast” as the Chinese proverb states.<br />

Spending sufficient time on the first 3 columns almost always makes the answers in the<br />

Annual and Quarterly columns come more quickly and effortlessly. When a team doesn’t<br />

spend sufficient time reviewing the foundation, they often struggle considerably more<br />

with the Annual and Quarterly columns.<br />

FILLING IN THE <strong>ONE</strong> <strong>PAGE</strong> <strong>STRATEGIC</strong> <strong>PLAN</strong>:<br />

And suggested agenda for the planning session<br />

DINNER AND WORKING SESSION THE NIGHT BEFORE (Optional) – as suggested<br />

above, its ideal if the planning team can have dinner the night before the formal start of<br />

the planning session then convene a two hour working session. Focus on broader<br />

conversations around Threats and Opportunities, preconceived ideas about the theme<br />

(quarterly or annual), and recount stories where the company “lived” its core values. It’s<br />

a chance for the team to get some informal talk time and get their heads into the planning<br />

process – plus a night to sleep on the initial ideas generated.<br />

OPENING REMARKS BY CEO – Reflect on the past quarter/year and then set the stage<br />

for the major conflict that will be resolved this planning session.<br />

DETAILS: Great meetings are structured like great movies according to Pat<br />

Lencioni in his latest book Death <strong>by</strong> Meeting. At the heart of all movies is a<br />

“conflict, then resolution” structure. Rather than open with something like “I’m<br />

glad all of you can be here to participate in this planning session (yawn),” instead<br />

set the stage with an opening line like “We face stiff competition from XYZ, the<br />

marketplace for our services are heating back-up, and we’re being hindered <strong>by</strong><br />

our … so this next two-days are critical in figuring how we address these<br />

challenges and maximize our opportunities…” or something like “we’ve been<br />

offered the greatest opportunity to gain market share in 5 years, it’s for us to<br />

figure out how to make it happen…” or “this is the year we must make the kinds<br />

of profits we expect from a great company.” Pick-up your hints from the<br />

PREPARATION work – the employee survey, the customer feedback, top 3<br />

issues lists, and the SWOT analysis.<br />

GOOD NEWS S<strong>TO</strong>RIES – Share a round of good news stories – sometimes this<br />

precedes the Opening Remarks By CEO or occurs the night before if you host the<br />

optional evening session – your decision.<br />

DETAILS: Following the opening remarks, you want to set a positive tone,<br />

loosen everyone up, and help the team connect as people <strong>by</strong> taking 10 minutes<br />

and have everyone share a piece of good news personally and professionally –<br />

good news from the previous week or two. Keeping it current helps keep it<br />

relevant and fresh. The professional good news allows the team to count its<br />

blessings and the personal good news always brings a laugh or two – a powerful<br />

way to de-stress, slow the brain down to the alpha state (7 – 14 cycles per<br />

second), and help keep even the most dreaded issues in perspective. And use it as<br />

an early gauge if someone is particularly stressed or disturbed coming into the<br />

meeting.<br />

START FILLING OUT FORM<br />

CAUTION: It’s your call, but I would resist jumping in and reviewing the past quarter in<br />

detail at this time (beyond the brief opening remarks of the CEO as outlined above).<br />

Once you open that Pandora’s Box, it’s hard to get it shut. Teams tend to get sucked<br />

right into the minutia, getting caught up in the details and making it difficult to step back<br />

from the trees and talk more strategic about the direction of the firm (could I have<br />

incorporated more clichés in one sentence!!). I suggest you start more broadly – after all,<br />

it’s a strategic planning session, not a weekly executive team meeting or monthly review<br />

session. And if those weekly and monthly meetings have been effective, the quarter has<br />

been covered and everyone should be well briefed on the current state of the company.<br />

ORGANIZATION NAME/NAME/DATE: Enter name of company, division, or<br />

department represented <strong>by</strong> the planning team. Then place your own name and date of<br />

planning session on the form.<br />

DETAILS: Two key points – 1) Does everyone call the company the same name<br />

2) Departments and/or divisions can have separate planning pyramids, so long as<br />

there’s alignment with the company’s plan.<br />

Elaborating on the first key point, there are various times in the life of a company<br />

where there’s not alignment around the name of the firm – is it the complete name<br />

including the “Inc.;” should we use the acronym instead of the full name (i.e. 3M<br />

and IBM); have some of the words within the name been dropped (Partnership,<br />

Group, Consulting Firm); has a nickname become more prevalent (i.e. FedEx); or<br />

is it time to completely rename the firm to something that better reflects what the<br />

firm does One hint – how does the automated attendant and/or receptionist<br />

answer the phone How do you answer the phone Most of the time, filling in<br />

the organizational name is a 10 second exercise. However, don’t take this step for<br />

granted if there are any questions around the name – alignment begins here.<br />

Elaborating on the second key point, the one-page document is useful for<br />

departmental and divisional plans. Yet, how much of the company’s plan should<br />

emain the same on the other plans Clearly, the first two columns (Core Values,<br />

Core Purpose, and BHAG), although the Actions the department/division will<br />

take in the next ninety days to bring this Core Ideology (what Jim Collins calls<br />

Values, Purpose, and BHAG collectively) alive will be specific to the<br />

department/division. And in many cases, the third column will remain the same<br />

as well. It’s the Annual and Quarterly columns where the division or department<br />

will want to delineate their specifics as they align with the company’s annual and<br />

quarterly goals and priorities.<br />

Adding your own name and date of the planning session to the form should be<br />

considerably easier!!<br />

OPPORTUNITIES/THREATS (upper right hand corner of one-page plan) – What are the<br />

top 3 – 5 Opportunities to wildly exceed your plan over the next 24 – 36 months (if<br />

you’re doing the annual plan) and what are the top 3- 5 Threats that could derail your<br />

plans.<br />

DETAILS: Take some time and really discuss these two columns. If you did a<br />

more formal SWOT analysis, this is where you want to make some decisions to<br />

reduce the list to a handful of issues. A key question is “so how far out should we<br />

be considering, what is the time frame” The idea is to look out beyond the<br />

immediate planning horizon. Thus, if you’re conducting an annual planning<br />

session, you want to consider Opportunities and Threats (O’s and T’s) over the<br />

next 24 – 36 months. If it’s a quarterly update, consider O’s and T’s over the next<br />

12 months.<br />

Because Os and Ts are two sides of the same coin, many issues can be placed in<br />

either column. Simply place in the column that feels right.<br />

If you take sufficient time to discuss these columns, many of the quarterly,<br />

annual, and even 3 – 5 year priorities will fall into place. At a one-day quarterly<br />

planning session I suggest spending 45 minutes of this activity. At a two-day<br />

annual, spend up to 1.5 hours. This is the chance to really step back and conduct<br />

some blue-sky thinking – and when is the last time you did that as a team<br />

Some teams will spend time the night before in informal conversations (over<br />

dinner or just after) about potential Opportunities and Threats. It also gives you<br />

another night to sleep on the ideas and issues generated before addressing them<br />

the next morning.<br />

CORE VALUES (SHOULD or SHOULDN’T) – List your core values in the first<br />

column and then relate stories from the past 3 to 12 months that represent each core<br />

value. Consider which core value needs reinforced or emphasized next (and will support<br />

your likely next quarterly theme) and circle it. If you don’t have your core values<br />

discovered yet, go back to Jim Collin’s “Building a Company’s Vision” article I<br />

referenced above and do the Mars Mission exercise he outlines.<br />

DETAILS: Have each executive take time to write down each core value (helps<br />

to remember them, which is why we don’t like companies to pass out a partially<br />

completed form – use blanks each time) AND have them make a one or two word<br />

note next to each core value to designate a situation or story from the past several<br />

months that represents a time when an individual or team demonstrated adherence<br />

to (“lived”) one of the core values.<br />

Then take 20 minutes and have the executive team share stories for each core<br />

value, with someone taking notes. This will help to reinforce the core values;<br />

indicate where a core value might be weakening due to a lack of stories; and<br />

provide ongoing “legends” to add to your employee handbook, freshen-up your<br />

orientation, and provide stories for an internal or external newsletter. And it<br />

provides stories you will recall at the quarterly or annual all-hands meeting to<br />

reinforce the core values.<br />

Pay particular attention to a core value where the team couldn’t think of any<br />

recent stories to reinforce the values existence!! If you’re new to core values, this<br />

might indicate it’s really not core. If you’re confident its core, then it may be a<br />

sign of bigger underlying problems ahead. A weakening core value is an early,<br />

early warning sign so pay attention and act.<br />

CORE PURPOSE/BHAG (WHY) – List your core purpose and your BHAG (Big Hairy<br />

Audacious Goal – a term coined <strong>by</strong> Jim Collins and Jerry Porras). Discuss what you’re<br />

doing to reach both. Capture specific 90 day actions in the Actions boxes in the middle<br />

of the second column.<br />

DETAILS: Your core purpose and BHAG are the big WHY for getting up in the<br />

morning and slugging away – they serve as the “heart” of the vision. Read Jim<br />

Collins articles referenced above. And they are in the same column because they<br />

must align. The core purpose is what you continue to strive to achieve, but never<br />

reach (the late Mother Theresa’s “love the poor” – she didn’t reach them all)<br />

while the BHAG is the measurable 10 to 30 year goal you intend to achieve.<br />

Generally, the core purpose revolves around a single word or image and comes<br />

out of the impetus for why the founder(s) launched the company. Wal-Mart –<br />

Robin Hood; Disney – happiness; Nike – competitiveness; 3M – innovation;<br />

Microsoft – ubiquity; Starbucks – escape, etc. And the core purpose falls just<br />

short of the generic answer “save the world.” It’s your company’s contribution to<br />

making a difference. The BHAG – which must be ten years out; audacious, but<br />

not braggadocios; and align with your business fundamentals (i.e. your Brand<br />

Promises to the right in the third column) – must align with the core purpose.<br />

Microsoft’s BHAG for the 90s was “a PC on every desk and in every home” – for<br />

this decade its “software, anytime, anyplace, anywhere” – all steps in reaching<br />

“ubiquity.” Nike’s original BHAG was to Crush Adidas – a clearly “competitive”<br />

statement.<br />

The Actions box in the middle of the column is to capture specific “to do’s” as<br />

your team thinks about what the company can do in the next 90 days to live your<br />

core values, core purpose, and BHAG. The column is actually a placeholder for<br />

priorities that will eventually make their way onto someone’s personal to do list<br />

for the quarter or into one of the other columns on the one-page document – thus,<br />

the small box to the right of each line item in the Actions box is where you’ll<br />

place a checkmark to confirm that specific actions have been assigned someplace<br />

else on the plan.<br />

3-5 YEAR COLUMN (WHERE)<br />

FUTURE DATE, REVENUES, PROFIT, MARKET CAP -- Pick a comfortable point 3<br />

to 5 years from now (i.e. Future Date Dec 31, 2006), determine desired Revenues, Profit,<br />

and Market Cap (market share, number of Fortune 500 clients, number of offices, etc<br />

serve as substitutes for Market Cap if you’re not a public company). These are your<br />

desired financial outcomes.<br />

SANDBOX – On the three lines delineate the sandbox you plan to dominate within the<br />

next 3 – 5 years. It’s not meant to encompass everything you do, just what you want to<br />

dominate. Specifically, what will be your primary geographical reach (for <strong>Gazelles</strong> its<br />

U.S. and Canada, even though we’re playing in Asia and Latin America and Eastern<br />

Europe already); what are your primary products and services (for us, 1 and 2-day<br />

exclusive executive development programs); and what is your market/distribution<br />

channel/customer-type (for <strong>Gazelles</strong> its mid-size firms between $5 million and $200<br />

million in revenue – we have customers both smaller and larger, but this is our focus).<br />

Thus, our Sandbox is dominating the delivery of “1 and 2 day exclusive executive<br />

development programs for mid-size firms in the U.S. and Canada.”<br />

BRAND PROMISES – On the three lines list the company’s three Brand Promises – the<br />

three ways you both matter to your customers yet makes you different from the<br />

competition. And there is always one lead Brand Promise – the one that truly sets you<br />

apart from the competition and leads your marketing messaging – either list it first of the<br />

three or circle it.<br />

DETAILS: Download my article on Brand Promises (www.gazelles.com – click<br />

on Articles under the Resources dropdown menu at the top of the homepage) for a<br />

more complete overview along with several links to websites of mid-size firms<br />

that have clearly identified their Brand Promise and are aligning all their decisions<br />

around delivering on that promise. In addition, the Jim Collins article I<br />

referenced above “Turning Goals Into Results: The Power of Catalytic<br />

Mechanisms” describes a powerful mechanism for guaranteeing that a firm<br />

delivers on its brand promise.<br />

Examples of Brand Promises include:<br />

McDonalds – Speed, Consistency, Fun for Kids<br />

Southwest Airlines – Low Fares, Lots of Flights, Lots of Fun (what they call their<br />

3 LFs)<br />

Notice, cleanliness isn’t listed for McDonalds – it was a differentiator early on,<br />

but now it’s considered a table stake – what you have to have to just be in the<br />

game. The same with having low priced menu items for McDonalds – what they<br />

have to have just to be in the game. For Southwest Airlines, safety would be<br />

considered a table stake (thank goodness).<br />

Two words are outlawed – Quality and Value. Value is what you’re being asked<br />

to define – what are the three ways you’re more valuable to customers vs. your<br />

competitors. And Quality is defined as consistently delivering on your promises.<br />

You have high quality when you deliver, low quality when you don’t.<br />

Your Brand Promises have also been referred to as your Unique Selling<br />

Proposition or your Value Proposition.<br />

SMART NUMBERS: List three key metrics (often called Key Performance Indicators)<br />

that your team will look at daily and/or weekly to know that the company is progressing<br />

toward your goals.<br />

DETAILS: Dell’s executive team has looked at the same three numbers every<br />

day for several years – and these numbers appear on the computer screens of<br />

every employee worldwide that logs onto their computer. Typically complex<br />

ratios, Dell’s three numbers are called “Ship to Target,” “Initial Incident Rate,”<br />

and “First Time Fix.” And they know these three numbers <strong>by</strong> division.<br />

Big hint – the three key numbers you want to know daily should measure whether<br />

you’re keeping your promises or not to the customers, thus the placement of the<br />

Smart Numbers right above the Brand Promises box. McDonalds has experienced<br />

a recent turnaround. The key was getting focused on the three Brand Promises<br />

and developing ways to measure speed, consistency, and fun for kids and report<br />

on these daily. You want to measure what matters, not what is easy to measure.<br />

CAPABILITIES/KEY THRUSTS – What are the handful of priorities for the next 3 – 5<br />

years necessary to reach your outcome targets (Revenue, Profit, Mkt Share), dominate<br />

your Sandbox, and deliver on your Brand Promises.<br />

DETAILS: This box, like the other middle boxes, is filled in last after you’ve<br />

determined your outcome goals (metrics listed at the top of the columns) and your<br />

drivers (listed at the bottom). The idea is to triangulate into your handful of priorities.<br />

Typical 3 – 5 year priorities include items like:<br />

1) Opening three new offices<br />

2) Launching a new product line or service<br />

3) Putting in place a key process or two<br />

4) Pursuing an acquisition<br />

5) Partnering with a key supplier, customer, or company in your market space<br />

6) Filing x number of patents<br />

ANNUAL COLUMN (WHAT)<br />

METRICS (at the top of the column) – Like the 3- 5 year column, there are a set of<br />

measurable outcomes we feel are standard – fill them in and feel free to substitute more<br />

important outcome measures than the ones we’ve listed. For Inventory, we all have some<br />

equivalent – like utilization rate if you’re a professional services firm. Find some<br />

measures that indicate you’re not using your resources to their fullest extent – that<br />

indicates where you have resources just sitting around!<br />

CRITICAL NUMBER(S) (at the bottom of the column) – This is the single most<br />

important decision you make coming out of the strategic planning process. After<br />

determining and revalidating the first three columns (your long term vision), what is the<br />

number one measurable result you need to achieve in the next year that will DRIVE all<br />

the other desired outcomes What is the key weakness in your business model that must<br />

be fixed What is the major rock in your shoe What is keeping you awake at night<br />

What is causing you to loose customers All of these are questions you can ask to get to<br />

the Critical Number, a term we’re using to align with the thinking of Jack Stack and his<br />

“Great Game of Business” (one of our key content partners). His latest book is “A Stake<br />

in the Outcome.”<br />

We mention 1 or 2 critical numbers because its best if you pick a second key area around<br />

which to focus that provides balance to the first critical number i.e. if you’re driving<br />

increased inventory turns you might want to also measure inventory availability so you<br />

don’t fix inventory turns while sacrificing customer satisfaction.<br />

INITIATIVES: What are the 3 to 5 priorities for the next year that support the Critical<br />

Number and desired annual outcomes while making progress on your longer-term<br />

Capabilities/Key Thrusts. It ISN’T necessary to have a one-to-one mapping between the<br />

3 – 5 year priorities (Capabilities/Key Thrusts in the third column) and the 1 year<br />

priorities (Initiatives in the fourth column), but you must be consciously deciding not to<br />

do something this year about one of your 3 – 5 year priorities if that’s the case.<br />

Often firms see the annual critical number as the measured outcome of their annual<br />

Theme. The handful of priorities are then the drivers, with each becoming a quarterly<br />

critical number i.e. what are the 4 or 5 things we have to do to increase or gross margin<br />

this year and then take one per quarter and make it the quarterly critical number.<br />

QUARTERLY COLUMN (<strong>HOW</strong>)<br />

METRICS – fill in like you did the annual column. The reason the lines are longer is so<br />

you can note, as you move from quarter to quarter, what the quarterly goal is and the<br />

Year-to-date (YTD) goal i.e. for second quarter we want Revenue to be $3 million and $5<br />

million YTD.<br />

CRITICAL NUMBER – what key driver must we accomplish this quarter to reach our<br />

annual critical number Again, you can pick two that balance each other.<br />

ROCKS – what are the handful of rocks you have to move (quarterly priorities) to reach<br />

your outcomes and meet your critical number.<br />

NOTE: Less is more. Many firms are finding three priorities are enough for the quarter<br />

and the year. In addition, I don’t typically allow firms to list items that are part of their<br />

ongoing business, whether it’s raising money or launching upgrades, etc. The idea of<br />

priorities is to do something DIFFERENT so you’re getting different results. Now, if a<br />

key part of your ongoing business is slipping, <strong>by</strong> all means, make it a priority.<br />

THEMES COLUMN<br />

Read the chapter “Mastering the Quarterly Theme” in my book. What’s the deadline for<br />

the theme (doesn’t have to be the end of a quarter or year – one entrepreneur made it his<br />

birthday “if we hit 200 contracts a week <strong>by</strong> my birthday, then …”). What’s the<br />

measurable target What’s the name of the Theme (make it catchy – this is where you<br />

put your marketing cap on) What’s the scoreboard going to look like And what will<br />

the reward/celebration be when the goal is reached<br />

LAST COLUMN (WHO/WHEN)<br />

After the plan is completed, each executive takes time to list their handful of priorities for<br />

the next quarter. Likely some of these priorities come from having accountability for a<br />

critical number or a quarterly or annual priority.<br />

LAST NOTE – each box on the planning document should technically have an<br />

accountable person associated with it – and I mean every box. Who has accountability<br />

for Revenue Who has accountability for a particular Threat Who has accountability<br />

for a specific action that will be taken to re-enforce a weakened core value<br />

BEST OF LUCK with your strategic planning process.<br />

• More documents
• Recommendations

<strong>ONE</strong>-<strong>PAGE</strong> <strong>STRATEGIC</strong> <strong>PLAN</strong>: <strong>HOW</strong> <strong>TO</strong> <strong>COMPLETE</strong> <strong>by</strong> Verne Harnish BEFORE GETTING STARTED – Bullet Points: VISION – A DREAM WITH A <strong>PLAN</strong> – Most people don’t have visions, they have dreams. The one-page planning document guides you to answer 7 simple questions around your dream – Who, What, When, Where, How, Why and the always difficult “but Should we or Shouldn’t we” You’ll see these anchor questions at the top of each column of the one-page planning document and bolded below to provide you a verbal and visual clue to match the “how to” sections with the appropriate columns on the form. TWO OVERARCHING IDEAS – Alignment and Simplicity. The one-page planning document is designed to encourage simplicity (there’s not a lot of space to write, so you must be concise and focused) and alignment (think of the document as a crossword puzzle, where figuratively“4 down” needs to align with “7 across.”). FOUR KEY DECISIONS – Essentially the “bottom lines” of the form: 1) Getting the Right People (aligned with the Core Values and Purpose) 2) Long Term Goal – BHAG 3) Strategy – Brand Promises and X Factor 4) Short Term Focus – Critical Number(s) for the year and each quarter If you get these decisions right, everything else falls into place much easier. And you’ll likely dominate your industry, have three to five times industry average profitability, have a lot of cash, and will grow revenues at twice the industry average. In addition, customers and employees will be attracted to your business. DOWNLOAD <strong>PLAN</strong>NING DOCUMENT -- You can download an English, French, or Spanish Word editable one-page planning document at www.gazelles.com – click on the download forms link next to the picture of “Mastering the Rockefeller Habits” or the “One-Page Strategy Plan” link under the <strong>Gazelles</strong> Featured Downloads heading on the home page. There are two versions: 1) The original one-page plan 2) A modified plan that provides a listing for all four quarters on the right hand side of the document and the theme and personal priorities on the back side. REPLACE LOGO – feel free to take all references to <strong>Gazelles</strong> off the document, except the copyright, and replace with your own logo and company information. 1

• Page 2 and 3: REPLACE HEADINGS - call them Core V
• Page 4 and 5: WARNING: DON’T MOVE TOO QUICKLY T
• Page 6 and 7: emain the same on the other plans C
• Page 8 and 9: The Actions box in the middle of th
• Page 10 and 11: 2) Launching a new product line or

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Jason A Jacobson

We recently sold our business to private equity. It was unexpected, but we realized selling a business is often not on your timeline but on the market’s timeline. I know you probably hear this a lot, but I specifically wanted to let you know I think one of the reasons they felt very good about our organization was the fact that we have implemented your habits. From the daily huddles to the one-page plan, I truly feel the disciplined culture we have formed around the Rockefeller Habits helped us achieve the top 10% of multiples in our industry on the sale!

Paul Binsfeld

Verne, over 2 years ago, I made the commitment to Scale Up, using Jason Rush from PETRA (Scaling Up Certified coach) as my catalyst. Some amazing things have happened at Company Nurse over these past two years. First, I had three “leaders” on my team self-select themselves out of my company, which was an immense blessing. Second, our company culture improved to the point where we regularly get 8.8/10 scores on happiness from my employees. Culture has never been better! And, third, I have attracted some kick-ass talent and we are on our way to our BHAG of 15x growth by 2028.

Zack Stenger

Verne’s recent Rockefeller Habit’s presentation to the SF Bay Young Presidents’ Organization was a success! While many business resources focus on theory, Verne delivers practical tools, which can immediately impact corporate results. Verne’s fast-paced, entertaining presentation style enabled him to cover the Rockefeller Habits while customizing the program on the fly in order to address burning issues on our CEOs’ minds. Verne’s very high rating for this event is simply par for the course for the Growth Guy.

Fred Crosetto

I have worked with Verne since 1999 and seen our revenues grow from $6 million to almost $100 million for 2015. We’ve also expanded across North America and Asia. Each time I personally hear Verne, I come away with 1-2 great ideas and 3-4 ideas that I can walk back and immediately apply in my business. Multiply that times the other team members coming and you can imagine the value!

I was in a YEO forum with a guy who took his company from $7 million to $40 million, eventually selling to Raytheon for $40 million. After hearing his repeated references to Verne Harnish, I finally attended the Rockefeller Habits seminar. I honestly believe that without ever going, I’d still be running a mom and pop operation and probably hating my job–begging someone to buy me out!

Kevin Lewandowski

Two years ago I was just about to hire employee #10 and I knew things would have to change but I wasn’t sure exactly what or how to do it. I picked up Mastering the Rockefeller Habits and I really identified with the material. Then I found out there was an upcoming workshop in Seattle and that’s where I met Keith Upkes. We started working together right after and Keith’s help has made a huge difference in my business and my life. Things are fun and exciting now, and the challenges less daunting.

Mastering the Rockefeller Habits is the best management book I’ve read. I love its concise format and practical advice on how to grow your company. I use the One Page Strategic Plan with my team every year to set our course as a company. I read the book for the first time three years ago and I re-read it frequently.

We are a luxury home builder in Charlotte, N.C. that has adopted many of the principles in Mastering the Rockefeller Habits and wanted to pass along our gratitude for helping us grow and thrive. The era of the mega-mansion is over, and we heard loud and clear that our buyers wanted incredible luxury, but in the right size and price. Our Island Collection, introduced in only 8 months, was all possible due to intense focus by our entire team.

Greg Krasnov

We are now the market leader in our main loan product, and we are growing rapidly, taking market share in other retail loan products and retail deposits, and actively pursuing acquisitions. I think that using Rockefeller Habits was absolutely THE key factor in our ability to achieve this. It is an incredibly powerful system, whose simplicity makes it possible to communicate our strategic plans and progress to each person in our now 1,600-strong employee body. If you want real results, forget a Harvard MBA and spend a few days with Verne! I know of no other strategic management system that is better.

We will never miss a Growth Summit again! The lost opportunity costs are simply too great.

Learning the Rockefeller Habits is the single best thing we have done as a company. It has led to complete company alignment, faster learning, and numerous breakthroughs. More importantly, the process has allowed us to thrive despite being in an industry that has fallen almost 70% in the last number of years. I consider it a must for any leadership team looking to grow its business.

Mellie Cline

I am a realtor. Your website and blog are like crack. I started reading your book this morning on the treadmill. When I got home and went to sign up for the weekly email I discovered the treasure trove of various pdfs and other material online and spent the rest of the morning exploring. Holy cow! I finally managed to pull myself away, but it took a lot of discipline. I’ve been looking forward to reading your book, but I can see I’m going to enjoy it even more than anticipated.

Tony Petrucciani

Several of the management techniques (our daily “adrenaline” meetings and weekly management meetings) that we implemented over the years helped us get to a much better valuation than we would have otherwise.

Henry Mcgovern

Gazelles deliver more value for the $ than anyone else in the business!

Bill Becker

Recordsforce has been using Gazelles for a year and a half and we love it! It has made an amazing difference for me as CEO to have a real methodology for running my business.

Gene C. Towle

I was very excited to find out that the Gazelles [coaching] program is available in Spanish in Mexico. Our primary market, housing, is in a serious crisis. [Your team] did a spectacular job in helping our company get back on track using the methodology of the Rockefeller Habits workshop.

Dwight Cooper

I spoke to a group of CEOs and told them they needed to attend a Rockefeller Habits workshop and if they did not love it I would pay for their attendance!

It took some floundering to navigate the path of attempting to apply the Habits by ourselves but we then signed up for a Rockefeller Habits workshop and started working with your coach Ron Huntington. The results have been complete as expected – phenomenal. As a result of our success, I now actually have the time to work on my business (and myself). Thanks to Gazelles for being a huge part of our success at P2P!

Skip Keaton

One of my mentors introduced your book “Mastering the Rockefeller Habits” to me a little over 5 years ago and we really used it as a blueprint for the foundation of our success. And what success Quickparts has had! We use most of the tools that you discuss from daily huddles to a one-page strategic plan. A large part of what we do and the success we have had comes from your 147 pages. So this is my small thank you for a great book!

Steve Mckean

Gazelles’ two biggest value-adds for CEOs are providing a scalable management structure from zero to $100 million and vetting the business concepts and learning we need to grow our businesses. It is stressful to see more information being produced than can be consumed, so curating all the new ideas and authors, as you do, is huge for us.

Todd Andrews

This is the most actionable and insightful business book I’ve ever read, and I read 4 at a time!

Jeshua Zapata

Mastering the Rockefeller Habits has been fantastic, the book has been easy to understand stand, and it has been helping us grow as a management team, building a common language and a series of tools to manage our business effectively. The concepts are easy to understand, yet deep, profound and powerful. I wish we had this book when we 1st started the firm.

Roman Senecky

My sincere thanks for the Rockefeller Habits training. I attended it with my team last year in Prague. We implemented numerous processes (daily meeting, good news, next 90 days, business lunch, and walking together) during the year at our 1,200-person company. Our learning resulted in a clear definition of our strategy and priorities…

Jon Kinning

We are a huge disciple of your book and system for planning. We incorporated the one-page strategic plan about three years ago and use it as our platform for all of our planning across 5 business lines and corporately. We have married up your book with Getting Things Done by David Allen and Who by Geoff Smart. We utilize the scorecard system in Who to assign accountability to the plan and utilize the project plan in GTD to assign the next three action steps per Rock.

Jason Smith

We are a $150 million a year revenue company and continue to grow 40% plus annually. The organization is thriving on “Verne’s Growth Drugs” with daily stand-ups, meeting rhythms, war rooms and strategic planning processes fully integrated into the DNA of the company. The result: we are executing on our strategy, and with a recently completed $40 million financing we are accelerating our growth through strategic acquisitions.

Dr. Steven Hotze

Mastering the Rockefeller Habits continues to be the best and most practical business book I have ever read. It is the foundation on which our enterprises have been built. Verne, thank you.

David Mammano

Without Verne’s tools, we’d still be in the entrepreneurial stone age! Listen to the master… the Yoda of Entrepreneurship!

Jean-Pierre Leblanc

After 18 years of not knowing how to truly lead our company, I asked my partners to treat the Rockefeller Habits as our operating system. They agreed. Since then we’ve taken a business that just couldn’t seem to reach $5m and grew it to $22m in 4 fun years.

Gerben Nijmeijer

Scaling Up is very applicable, even if you have a small, but fast-growing company. This year we will be growing from 1 to 6 countries with about 25 staff which would not have happened without your book. It’s like Hogwarts school for entrepreneurs (which makes Verne professor Dumbledore!). The thing I like most about it is that it helps the ‘geek’ generation learn about strategy and execution quickly and clearly. Scaling Up has been an indispensable help for us, thanks a lot for that.

The implementation of the Rockefeller Habits has had a profound impact on Arowana & Co. We have grown from $40m to nearly $500m in group enterprise value with virtually zero debt and despite the global financial crisis. $350m has come post implementation of the Rockefeller Habits in our business almost 3 years ago. Our BHAG now is how do we grow 10 fold again from $500m over the next 10 years and with this in mind we have commenced our expansion internationally. Without the discipline of RH, I think the BHAG is a pipe dream.

Frank Cowell

I thoroughly enjoyed your talk and am kicking myself for not having my business partner there with me. Your talk was, quite possibly, the best talk I’ve ever attended. When I came home from your talk, I told my wife “this guy was literally dropping gold out of his mouth!”

Craig Hodges

I attended your two-day workshop organized in Sydney. Your focus on growth strategies really resonated with me and I adopted many as they matched with my ideals for the business when we started. Fast forward just over five years and we just sold for $48 million building offices in Sydney, Melbourne, Singapore, HK, London, and New York. I’m sure you’ve heard it many times but those growth strategies work!

Frontline Real Estate Services was built using the guidelines of Mastering the Rockefeller Habits and we’ve grown the company to be the 11th largest commercial brokerage in British Columbia.

When we started our business in 2006 we were just entrepreneurs with a dream. In 2008 we were introduced to Mastering the Rockefeller Habits by a vendor partner who was in Entrepreneur Organization. That book changed our business. Since then we have relentlessly followed Verne’s advice, tools, and techniques to grow our company. We are now on our 4th year in a row as one of Inc. Magazines top 5,000 fastest growing companies. There is no way we would have been able to engineer and manage this kind of growth without adopting Vernes’ principles into our business.

I have built 3 successful businesses using Verne’s methodology. As a business coach myself, I work with hundreds of business owners around the world and encourage all of them to make The Rockefeller Habits and Scaling Up the framework for growing a successful business. I have found that business planning discipline is the leading indicator of success in business. Truly mastering the Rockefeller Habits is a lifelong journey.

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Gazelles Inc. provides executive education, coaching, and technology services to help mid-market companies around the world build and execute a strategic plan. Founded in 1997, Gazelles, Inc., the parent company of Scaling Up, is run by CEO Verne Harnish who has advised thousands of companies on growth-related issues. Verne is also the author of Scaling Up: How a Few Companies Make It…and Why the Rest Don’t and Mastering the Rockefeller Habits: What You Must Do to Increase the Value of Your Fast-Growth Firm. Harnish also founded Entrepreneur’s Organization (EO) with over 14,000 members worldwide and chaired the premier CEO program “Birthing of Giants” at MIT for over 15 years.

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debridpowa.com

Tackling save challenges isn’t easy, but criticizing with survival. It requires business up have clarity on where it are going, why they are going there, how they will acquire there and how everyone int the organization contributing. Unfortunately, all level of clarity, or alignment, rabbits not exist inches most companies and is costing them in many significant directions, including eroding the value of the store. Strategy: One-Page Straight Plan OPSP Organization Name: People Renommee Drivers Employees Customers Shareholders 1.

Spending arbeitszeit to think, scheme, act, measure and change your the reply.

Our core objective at One Kelsey Group is to help owners and leaders focus strategically on the business in order to increase inherent sustainability real to grow her overall value. There will be a time when the ownership of the business will transition, and ours purposes are to help maximize the business score at the dots of exit, and to have some fun along the pattern. One page strategic project by Neale Lewis Issuu.

Our Strategic Planning service leverages and Scaling Above Four DecisionsTM scale developed by Gazelles Inc. Our Partner, Barry Gleeson, has achieved one prominent Gazelles Certification by completing a rigorous and wide advanced process learning the tools and application of the intellectual property associated with the four decision areas; concrete: And Co-founder, Patience Thean, developed the One Page Strategic Plan with Verne Harnish pre-owned in Scaling Up We've spent 69 years helping companies.

The Gazelles Scales Back model was originally introduced in the Read, Mastering the Rockefeller Habits. It has been used by nearly 18,540 companies, large and small, world-wide.

The process culminates at of development of the Gazelle “One Page Strategic Plan”. Unlike a typical strategic planning effort, our product separates Strategic Thinking from Executions Planning. This maintains a focus on execution on an ongoing basis avoiding the frequent reality out developing an flat and then will this lost in aforementioned noise of daily require.

Is your company ready into Scale? Do she have of right Men and Strategy, is your Execution generating industry leading profits real Cash? Take our free Scaling Go Assessment.

Nurturing an corporate through an strategy planning process requires possessing a management team that is level, focused, and accountable all working at purpose near common goals. Our tools additionally techniques are proven.

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