KEY POINTS:
One of the most important things to make any business plan succeed is to keep it simple, says Martin West, CEO of corporate trainers Afterburners.
This Australian ex-fighter pilot turned business coach was in New Zealand to show company leaders how to execute a plan as if they were flying a jet.
"You're operating in an environment where your world changes every 10 minutes. It's high tech. You're facing new threats. To survive and succeed in that environment we discovered we had to come up with principles because this is just a damn hard environment to operate in," says West.
One of the principles is to keep it simple. West jokes that within the fighter pilot community they refer to themselves as not being all that smart.
"We're fairly simple people. We like things being kept simple. We're the typical alpha male - one thing at a time. We just said, 'Look, keep the planning to one page'."
But fighter pilots are not alone. West says the concept of keeping it simple had an immediate appeal in the business community.
"Some of the reasons people on the front line aren't executing is because things aren't simple enough. We like the idea of keeping things simple. We like this idea of saying that we're not rocket scientists."
Simplicity in battle is critical to staying alive.
"In a conflict, if you don't execute well, you or someone else is dead. Even in simulation, when that's put in front of you day in and day out, you work really hard at keeping things simple."
Another principle is execution. West says most organisations achieve about only 60 per cent of the results they expect from their annual strategic planning. This execution gap is something fighter pilots are taught how to close and their same methodology works in business, West says.
"The number one reason for the lack of results is not that the plan is bad. It's due to poor execution. Every ounce of our effort is focused on helping organisations close the execution gap."
To do this, West says you need to answer a few questions.
"Do you have a culture of relentless focus on the plan and execution? Do you look at the plan fortnightly? Do you look at where you said you were going to be and where you actually are?"
West says you're not going to be able to execute a plan well unless you have the buy-in of the front-line staff who are actually executing it.
"Whenever you bring in front-line people to help you answer those questions, inevitably the answers are much clearer and realistic. Get the buy-in from people lower than the senior management team. And when I say buy-in, I mean debate. If there's no debate, there's no buy-in."
Hiring consultants to come in and develop your strategy or write your business plan is just not a good idea, West says.
"As soon as you get consultants to write your business plan you've immediately built in the possibility that the organisation is not going to buy into it because they didn't develop it."
Chances are you already have your best consultants in-house.
"Get the senior management team and get a representation, even if it's only five or six people, from the next two or three layers down."
Once everyone is on board, they need to be held accountable, West says. In fighter pilot speak, the follow-up performance review is called a debrief and is 80 per cent of closing the execution gap.
"I'd prefer a very average plan but a very well done debrief rather than the other way around. At the end of the day a plan is a plan and it means nothing until it is done."
The last thing most people want is another meeting to go to. So West says to try to include the debrief in your current meeting structure and keep it to 30 minutes.
"You soon find that when you put a time limit on people, the important stuff starts being discussed first."
People should come to the debrief prepared to show what they've accomplished.
"The debrief is not about discovering the results. The results should be discovered before the debrief. The debrief is about discussing what the results say versus where you are."
West says three things are required to do a debrief well:
1. Set the time aside every two weeks and just show up and do it.
2. Get the team to come prepared with results.
3. The last words should be about future action.
Since the debrief is about accountability, certain questions need to be asked.
What did we say we were going to do? What have we done? What do we need to do for the next fortnight? What's working? What's not working? What are we going to change?
"Don't try to address teambuilding before getting really clear with what you want from your team and how they're going. If there are teambuilding challenges, sometimes it's the result of it not being clear about what's expected and not getting constant feedback."
Again with teambuilding, West says to keep it simple.
"Teams just need two things. They need to know what's expected of them and they need feedback on how they're going. So, they need a plan and they need a debrief."
With this structure in place, West says management should digest the year in 90-day chunks. The strategic plan may cover 12 months to five years, but the executable parts should be focused on the next 90 days only.
"It's a matter of focus. When you keep in front of someone's eyes the two or three things we have to get done in the next 90 days, they actually get it done. Whereas if it's buried in a five-page document, you tend to put it in the back of your mind and say, 'Yeah, we've got 12 months to do that'."
The 90 day plan should consist of just two or three achievable big initiatives which the fighter pilots call "centres of gravity".
"What are the two or three really high return initiatives or components of this plan? Don't give them lists with 15 things on them. Just highlight the two or three things which require minimum effort but deliver maximum impact."
Business people, like fighter pilots, are constantly being faced with new technology, new equipment and new challenges. West says it's not about working yourself to death but keeping it simple and staying focused. If you can't get your people home by at least 8pm you're not doing something right, he says.
West admits he doesn't have the perfect solution or the answer to every problem but a structured 90-day plan is a big step in the right direction.
"If you're really serious about getting something done, you're putting money into it and it's the future of your organisation, then looking at it every quarter and changing the priorities every quarter is not a big deal."
