Why You Need A One-Page Strategic Plan + Free Template
A one-page strategic plan is a secret weapon for the best leaders within any organization. Having a one-page plan gives you an advantage over the competition by keeping you focused on the critical choices that make your team, department, or company different and better.
This article will help you write the best one-page strategic plan to guide your organization.
What is a one-page strategic plan?
A one-page strategic plan summarizes all of the choices you developed in your strategic-planning meetings and off-sites. It provides a record of the critical choices you and your colleagues are making to transform your company into the type of company that can achieve your goals.
Your one-page strategic plan should include the common strategic planning elements, including all of the critical choices that you are making to compete and win in any endeavor – whether that’s for a company, department, team, or individual.
A one-page strategic plan should answer the following questions:
1. What is your company’s aspiration?
Defining your aspiration helps set the aim of your company. It defines what your company wants to achieve over the next three years. It’s more tangible than traditional mission and vision statements.
Here is an example of Bravium’s current one-page strategic plan:
Throughout this article, you’ll see us share our actual strategic plan components as examples to illustrate how this plays out. We’re all about the real deal here, so we don’t worry too much about sharing our strategy with the world. Besides, as much as we love strategy, execution is where all the hard work happens!
2. Who is the customer?
Knowing – and defining – your customer helps focus your strategy on precisely who you plan to serve and delight. It is the first narrowing question of a strategy, and it’s critical that you get this right. Without a definite customer, the odds of having a winning strategy are unlikely.
Example of customer definition:
Bravium has three types of customers to match the type of work that we do. This is an area where we will continue to refine as we learn more about our customers’ pains, gains and jobs to be done.
3. What is the scope of your business?
Defining the scope of your business provides boundaries for what your business, team, or department does. Capture what products or services you offer, in which geographies you will compete, and what channels you will use to connect with your customers.
Don't skip this question because the answers seem too obvious. It’s hard to compete and win when you can‘t even articulate what you do!
Example of business scope:
It’s taken numerous revisions over three years to clearly articulate what Bravium does. I’m still not satisfied because I believe we can make it crispier!
4. What is your company‘s value proposition?
Your value proposition clarifies why people will buy from you based on what value they receive. Unfortunately, the answer to this question is often the toughest of the group because most leaders’ first answer is “our people” or “great service”.
You may have great people, but that isn‘t going to be the reason your customers choose to work with you. Even if they are internal customers, they have a choice whether or not to collaborate with you.
Try to write the top five ways in which you will provide value to your customers that they can’t get from anywhere else.
Example of our value proposition:
We listen closely to our clients on why they choose us and what makes them refer us to others. The list above is draft #172 to summarize what makes us different than the competition. Again, this will be in perpetual revision.
5. What capabilities must you develop?
Because strategy is all about the transformation your company needs to make to achieve its aim, you need to articulate the new capabilities that will allow you to deliver on the promise you made when you wrote down the value proposition. Saying and doing are two different things.
Capture the essential behaviors, skills, traits, and qualities that your company needs to develop to win with customers.
Example of capabilities we need to develop to make the rest of the strategy work:
Like any company, department, or team, Bravium needs to grow our capabilities to deliver the value proposition. The first three are all about getting better at how participants experience us in a workshop, training or coaching session. The last two are the behind the scenes work that needs to be done so that we can scale the business.
6. What systems must be in place to support your strategy?
It’s super easy to write down all the things you want to do, but it’s much tougher to make them a reality. That’s why you need to put systems in place that will ensure you achieve your aim. Ask yourself which norms, metrics, tools, and frameworks you will rely on to execute your strategy.
Example of internal systems to support the strategy:
We are big on practicing what we preach when it comes to living by our values, operating principles, and transformation. We often say that we can inspire transformation without transforming ourselves. These seem like obvious choices, but we like to keep them on the front page so we never forget.
Why is a one-page plan so effective?
Going through the process of writing down your strategy is worth the price of admission. However, the real magic of a one-page strategic plan is in its brevity. A one-page strategic plan is effective because:
It’s short – so you must choose your words wisely. By limiting yourself to a single page, you are forcing yourself to articulate your choices better than if you had an entire binder to get to the point.
It’s simple – which makes it easier to understand. The easier something is to understand, the easier it will be to communicate and execute. If you want to compete and win in your business, keep things simple.
It gets referenced more often. The beauty of a one-page strategy is that it is on a single page, and a single page is portable – like a notebook, a bookmarked file, or simply a poster at your desk. Make it easier for your team to stick to the strategy by keeping it on a single page. Better yet, laminate that page, so your team members can easily reference it anytime they need to make a decision.
Tips for writing your one-page strategic plan
Here are a few suggestions for you to consider if you’re ready to get started on your own one-page strategic plan.
Invite diversity of thought to the table
It’s difficult to be objective when you’re the only one in the room. Effective strategic plans rely on others to get a clear picture of reality and to set a significant aim for our company. Eight to twelve people is a very nice group size that is big enough to be diverse, yet small enough for people not to feel the need to puff up or shrink in front of others.
Go offsite
Strategic planning is an exercise that shouldn’t be done the same way you run all your other meetings in the board room. If you want people to think differently, use a change in the environment to help them do it. Whether local or out of town, going offsite disrupts the routine and insulates the participants from everyday distractions.
Hire a facilitator
Are you a facilitator or a participant? You can't be both, no matter how hard you try. A good facilitator can help you plan and lead your offsite group to ensure you achieve your desired outcomes while allowing you to contribute like a participant. A great facilitator will push, challenge, and disrupt the thinking of your participants, so they can think differently and become more strategic in the process.
Don‘t settle for the first draft
And don‘t settle for the second draft, either. Write your one-page strategy, and then come back to it a couple of days later with the sole objective of reducing the number of words it takes to articulate your choice. Then get feedback and revise again to get a truly strategic strategy! It needs to be so clear that my 86-year-old grandmother could understand it!
Move quickly
Traditionally strategy is a long and arduous process, mired in data and SWOT analysis. But it SHOULD be inspiring and creative as well. Pull together a multitude of options to achieve your aims and then select the combination of choices you think will put the odds in your favor. Then design a handful of tests you can complete over the next 90 days to prove yourself right or wrong.
Revisit it regularly
To set it and forget seems too obvious of a mistake to mention, but the evidence would say otherwise. Most people can barely articulate their strategy, let alone the actions they took lately to achieve it.
Having a one-page strategy allows you to carry it around with you, and it means that it won’t be that hard to make evidence-based edits once a quarter. Discuss which choices made in the strategy are working and what’s not working. If they’re not working, fix them!
Final thoughts
If you don’t have a strategy, then take the time to write at least a one-page strategy. You will be doing yourself a favor by writing it down for the first time. Once you’ve done that, take it to the next level by supplementing it with supporting information and definitions. Taking this approach allows you to see the big picture and then fill in the details.
Here are some additional resources to consider:
Request a copy of our popular ebook – See the Big Picture: A nine-step guide to being more strategic
Schedule a call with one of our strategy facilitators
If you want to pursue in-depth the questions posed in the one-page strategy, check out anything written by Roger Martin, especially Playing To Win. He played a pivotal role in defining how to make strategy simpler, less painful, and more effective. I’m a super fan of his work!
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Want help planning and leading your next workshop or offsite? Request a Consultation.
Jeff is a partner at Bravium, and he and his team facilitate strategy and culture workshops that receive rave reviews for being human-centered, elegantly designed, and transformational. He can help you plan your next workshop or offsite experience so you can feel confident that it’s purposeful and productive.