
We cooked and ate the thing, but I’m not sure we digested it.
But the chapter on creating “alignment” hit me. Marc writes a one-page business plan, updated every six months. His management team of 30 leaders, as well as a leadership team of 250, reviews the 1-page document, and eventually, everyone in the company has his or her own one-pager that aligns with the company one-pagers. Marc calls it his V2MOM process for Vision, Values, Methods, Obstacles, Measures. This is truly a clever process, considering that he grew his SaaS company to $1 billion in sales in the time it took me to beat $30 million. Needless to say, I pay attention to his stuff.
One of my other heroes, Verne Harnish, founder of www.eonetwork.org, also has a format for a one-page business plan, although his final product is more like 4 pages. You can download it at http://mygazelles.com/myPage1.html, and I’d recommend reading several of Verne’s explanations about the various sections.
Anyway, now that we have the long plan, I know it is time to do the more difficult work of writing a short one. I can’t help but think of Mark Twain, however, who said, “I didn't have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead.” Nuts.