The Brilliance of a One-Page Plan

Building a strategic plan is relatively easy when guided with the help of an expert. Executing that plan is hard, but it doesn’t have to be!

What Strategic Plans Shouldn’t Be

First of all, most strategic plans are WAY TOO complicated. And, by complicated, I mean they have WAY TOO many strategic initiatives, confusing visions, equally confusing missions or purposes, and do not take into consideration the customer and how the business wants to position itself. Then… the plan fills a thick binder with hundreds of pages showing all the due diligence that went into the plan.  

It’s no wonder those plans don’t get executed – especially when you factor in that the people responsible for implementing the plans have day jobs.

What Strategic Plans Should Be

Enter the rise of the One-Page Plan!

A plan-on-a-page forces the leaders of the organization to really think hard about what it is that they want to do – that is, the major few versus the minor many.

A simple one-page plan will have the organization’s:

1. Core Values. Values have finally come of age and act as a magnet for attracting top talent that believes the same things you do. The secret with values though is to talk about them all the time – as in every day! Bring them to life by starting every meeting with a ‘Values Moment’ where you highlight a value and talk about how you or someone else saw it in action




2. Purpose (The ‘Why’). I don’t talk about Mission Statements anymore because way too many businesses don’t have a mission statement – they usually have a long, three-paragraph description that reads like “War and Peace” and no one can recite it or tell you what it means. A purpose is clear and concise. It talks about why you are in business. It sets up a ‘Cause’ for your team to chase.




3. Vision. Vision is all about where you are going. It has to be clear, compelling, aspirational and measurable. The very best visions are also less than seven words.




4. The Three Strategies. There is all sorts of data out there about businesses that fail to execute (83%) when they have more than three strategies versus those that do execute (84%) when they have three strategies. The numbers don’t lie. Simple works.

How to Bring Your Strategic Plan to Life

That’s it. This information on one-page allows all leaders to carry it around in the notebook or on a tablet and have regular, every day (like brushing your teeth) conversations with people about the plan and how they contribute to it.

If you would like my template for a one-page plan, please email us and we will happily send you the template.

Robert Murray is a Vancouver, BC based Business Strategy Consultant, #1 Best Selling Author, International Keynote Speaker, and TEC Top Speaker of the Year for 2018. For further advice, insight and inspiration on how to unlock your inner leader, follow Robert on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook.

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