COMMUNICATING THE PLAN 323
You understand what it is trying to achieve and why. You know all its blind alleys, winding
lanes and expressways that will eventually take you to success. You are much less likely to
ignore this plan.
But what about that bright young technician in research and development, the enthu-
siastic new employee in marketing, the faithful old accounts manager who has been with
you for years? Do they feel the same? In fact, do they even know that there is a plan? Or
what is in the plan? Or why?
Of course, some elements of your plan might be trade secret. This is, after all, your
intellectual property, your unique formula for success. You cannot patent a business plan
(although a US federal appellate court ruled in late 1998 that an accounting method was
eligible for a patent – possibly opening the door for better legal protection of business
strategies in the future). You must, therefore, identify any elements of your strategy and
plan that have to be restricted in their circulation. These are usually parts of the strategy.
Once you start doing something operationally, the cat is at least peeping out of the bag.
I apologise for creating a little obstacle for you already. If, say, parts of your strategy are
under wraps, how can anyone else understand the associated operating plans? Well, you
have to adopt a sensible approach, maybe even stretch the truth. You can probably find
logical reasons that explain the activities and motivate the troops while camouflaging the
true objective from the enemy.
Communicating the plan
Motivation has to come from the top. I really do think that the ideal situation is for the
big boss to hold a meeting with the largest practical number of employees to introduce
the plan – not necessarily at a great level of detail. Lieutenants at that meeting can then
hold separate briefing meetings at the next level of detail, and so on. Overlap helps (see
Figure 13.3). If you are not right at the top, you might want to encourage your chief exec-
utive to kick off this process. If you have difficult labour relations or a highly unionised
workforce, do not forget to keep union or staff representatives involved all along the way.
Sometimes, it pays to let others think that they contributed and tacitly approved what
you were going to do anyway.
This is the crux. The first thing that you have to do is communicate the plan
to all those who could not be involved in its development. Help everyone
understand and support the plan and get them working towards its success.
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