A business plan only works if leadership builds accountability, relationships, and follow-through into daily operations and culture.
A lot of people in the AEC business – truth be told – think that business planning is just another meaningless “academic” exercise that really isn’t worth doing. As a result, they treat the whole process as such, and it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Outside of the AEC business, the majority of wannabe business owners see the business plan merely as a vehicle to raise startup capital, and once that goal has been accomplished, pay little attention to it or the process of maintaining it.
The truth is that the business plan should guide daily operation of the business. It’s an articulation of the firm’s reason for existence, what it is trying to accomplish or become, and what the creators’ basic philosophy is about and how they will approach everything they do. It is also a means of establishing goals and action items that will provide individual accountability for their accomplishment. That’s a tall order, but a good plan along with management that uses it will do all of those things.
I used to think (not long ago) that making all information about individual and group performance public inside the company would in itself guide accountability through establishment of the right corporate culture. But I have now come to realize that in itself is not enough. As my friend Matt Lewis, general manager of the large privately-held Lewis Automotive Group based here in Fayetteville likes to say, “Don’t forget ‘management’ has the word ‘manage’ in it.” In other words, managers do need to hold the people who work for them to account to do what they say they will.
That “holding people to account” is rarely fun. It is an art but also a discipline. Some people do it well and some don’t. Some managers try to use threats and fear to do it. While that may have worked in 1900, it rarely works today in a labor market where demand for quality workers generally exceeds supply. I find that some combination of relentless checking (some might say “needling”), combined with expressing disappointment in individuals who fail and celebrating and publicizing the accomplishments of those who succeed generally works best.
For this to work, however, employees must feel that their managers actually care about them as individuals. That requires a significant time investment from managers in really getting to know their people and to form real relationships with them that are not just transactional in nature. Therefore, having these kinds of solid relationships has to be seen as a precedent for accountability, and accountability has to be seen as a precedent for accomplishing what is in the business plan.
Of course, all of this is facilitated by first having all employees participate in the creation of the plan, by sharing the plan openly with all employees, and by periodically revisiting the plan publicly to track performance toward goals and checking of items on the “to-do” lists. On top of it, the firm does need to have a means of truly rewarding those who accomplish their goals, and either reforming or removing those team members who consistently demonstrate they cannot or will not do what they need to do.
Business plans are important. Management is a real job. You are responsible for the success of the enterprise, for your investors’ or lenders’ money, and for the prosperity of all the families who depend on the income of their family members who work for you. No one said it’s going to be easy or always be fun, but if it was, everyone would be doing it!
Mark Zweig is Zweig Group’s chairman and founder. Contact him at mzweig@zweiggroup.com.