How many initiatives should you focus on in a year?
After working through the eight pillars you’ll typically end up with 35 to 60 possible initiatives for year one, which is far too many. Narrow to around ten “must-dos”, the ones that will deliver most of the result, decide them by getting the team to vote, then give each an owner, a one-page action plan, and a simple traffic-light tracker. Prioritisation, accountability and communication are what turn a plan into results.
Why focus on so few initiatives?
Far fewer than you’ll generate. Working through the eight pillars typically produces 35 to 60 potential initiatives for year one, and that’s where clients feel overwhelmed, rightly. Narrow it to around ten key initiatives, because those ten usually move the needle most and deliver something like 80% of the result. The reason to be ruthless is human nature: give people a list of 60 and they’ll tick off the easy ones first, when what matters is doing the big ones that make the biggest difference to the strategy you’ve set. Strategy is about choice, and choosing your top ten “must-dos” is one of the most important choices in the plan. Ten is also enough to sustain momentum across the year: pick only four or five and they may all be done by the halfway mark, leaving the operational plan empty.
How do you decide which initiatives to prioritise?
Get the team to vote, because everyone in the room sees things through a different lens. The salesperson weighs sales results, the finance person weighs margin or unlocking capital, so a vote surfaces the collective view rather than one person’s. In practice, when an exec team, board or management team votes on the top ten, five, six or seven come out remarkably consistently: people already know which are the big ones. There’s usually some healthy argy-bargy over the last few, but that’s fine. We call the result the “top ten must-dos”. It’s a simple, fast way to move from a long, overwhelming list to a shared, agreed set of priorities everyone has had a hand in choosing, which also makes them far easier to commit to and deliver.
How do you make sure the initiatives actually get done?
Ownership, communication and tracking. First, give each of the ten a single owner in the room; they needn’t do all the work, but without one clear owner an initiative simply won’t happen. Second, tell the whole company what the ten are, because people several levels down want to know the plan and their role in it. Use town halls or regular stand-ups to report progress. Third, write a one-page action plan per initiative, covering the long-term tactics and timelines and, crucially, the short-term actions for the next four weeks, because if you don’t write those down, nothing happens. Then track with a simple traffic-light system: green on track, orange behind, red off track. In our experience, the clients who consistently hit seven greens out of ten are the ones growing double digits every year.
How 24HRBP approaches this
In a 24 Hour Business Plan session we take the long list of possible initiatives, vote them down to the top ten must-dos, give each an owner and a one-page action plan, and set up a traffic-light tracker. Prioritisation plus accountability is what separates plans that get delivered from plans that gather dust.
Watch the full episode on The 24HR Business Plan Podcast: Episode 12 - Prioritisation and Decision-Making in Strategy
