The One Thing You Need to Know E-Book

Ross Lovelock

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Fachliteratur
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 199

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013

Beschreibung

A tried and tested formula for business planning

What is the one thing you need to know in business? What’s the single most important aspect of business to master in order to succeed and grow? It has to be planning. Whether you’re sitting down to plan a whole brand strategy or tasked with planning a single product and taking it to market, nailing the planning and decision making will ensure you have full buy-in from all stakeholders, a high level of market knowledge, know exactly what value your product or service brings and a thorough understanding of how the financials will work. In short, you’ll have an idea that succeeds. Ross Lovelock and his company SCQuARE have spent the last 20 years developing a formula for such planning. Ross has shared this formula with some of the world’s leading companies – now he’s going to share it with you. The One Thing You Need to Know is a complete business planning toolkit.

• A simple, implementable explanation of how to bring a product plan or a brand strategy together
• Will teach you the critical business skill of creating and selling plans
• Learn how to think through a complex business problem, create the right solution and then sell it through the corporate maze
• Explains exactly how to distil vast amounts of information into a compelling business story that will warrant a YES decision from the boss

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

Endorsements

Title page

Copyright page

Dedication

Foreword from Justin King

Preface

Why I wrote this book

Introducing the SCQuARE mnemonic

Who should read and use this book

How to get the best out of this book

Acknowledgements

Why You Should Read this Book

The fundamental skill

Why are many meetings such a painful ordeal?

CHAPTER 1: Making the Critical Difference

The corporate maze; a dead end for ideas

Creating alignment; a direct correlation with success

Creating alignment with SCQuARE

Introducing SCQuARE

Building a jigsaw puzzle

Sharing a clear aim

Analysis leads to insight

Focus on consequences

Define the Pivotal Question

First sell the problem

Ask how before why

Tell a powerful story

Describing the SCQuARE process

The source; where to go looking for data

The Setting; establishing the basis of the plan

The Consequences; the call to action

The Pivotal Question and Answer; problem defined, solution sold

The action plan – Recommendations and Evidence; the road to execution

The Story; creating a compelling narrative

CHAPTER 2: Starting with the Setting

Defining the entity; aligning around key parameters

Defining the aim; not the journey

Definitions of success; a shared vision of the future

Pre-set objectives; targets from a higher authority

Create the Setting; establish the context of the plan

Positive ‘… so what?’

Summary

Case study

CHAPTER 3: Understanding the Consequences

Interrogating the Setting

What has changed?

What could change?

What about complications?

More about Consequences

The causal chain

Summary

How Can John Get Everyone On The Same Page?

CHAPTER 4: Defining the Pivotal Question

What does ‘Pivotal Question’ mean?

The principles of the Pivotal Question

Building the Pivotal Question

Causal chain diagram for the Family Grocers Division

Summary

How Can John Get Everyone On The Same Page?

CHAPTER 5: Finding the Right Answer

What does an Answer look like?

Developing the Answer; by cross referencing the question

Creating and selling the right strategies

Problems you might find

Summary

Case study

CHAPTER 6: Making the Answer Work

Creating a rock-solid plan

Turning an Answer into an action plan

STEP 1

STEP 2

STEP 3

The pre-emptive questions

Summary

How Can John Get Everyone On The Same Page?

CHAPTER 7: Telling A Powerful Story

What is a powerful story?

Using a storyboard to check sequence and emphasis

You must sell the problem

Building the story

Summary

How Can John Get Everyone On The Same Page?

Story headlines

CHAPTER 8: The One-Chance Pitch

Case study – one-chance pitch

Causal Chain template

Your story headlines

CHAPTER 9: Big Ideas Realised

The origins of BREAKER

SCQuARE and BREAKER together

A word about barriers

How BREAKER works

CHAPTER 10: Global Leaders in Strategic, Creative & Persuasive Thinking

Consultancy and Training mix determined by client needs

Consultancy and Facilitation of live challenges, enabling real time return on Investment

About the Author

Index

“Ross Lovelock's major gift lies in his obsession with objectivity. His combination of curiosity and humour, a reliance on hard facts and a quick impatience for rhetoric, have over and again proved invaluable in helping organizations correctly pinpoint and address their toughest challenges.”David W. Henderson , Chief Talent Officer and SVP, Human Resources MetLife

“Ross Lovelock, an incredible creative and passionate CEO with huge intellectual capacity who knows the real business world inside out and who delivers the SCQuARE content in such an entertaining and powerful way that you can't step away from training without being infected by the SCQuARE way of thinking.”Ulf Werkmeister, Vice President, Human Resources, Unilever DACH

“Ross is an acquired taste. I've been happy to acquire him to work on a number of important business challenges over the last decade. Like a fine wine, uncork him, let him and the team breathe and enjoy the taste of a completed plan and empowered team.”Vince Robinson, President, Nestle Walmart, USA

“SCQuARE enabled our organization to reduce the time dedicated to developing our annual strategic plan from 6 weeks to 6 days. Moreover, the SCQuARE Framework ensures that all strategies are spelt out in absolute terms so that we constantly deliver on time and budget while delivering the business growth required.”Lindsay Kelly, Managing Director, EXIMO, Australia

“The investment in SCQuARE repaid itself in the first 6 months. It reduced our ‘Planning for Growth’ cycle by over 50% … and that is being conservative. All of those that undertook SCQuARE were able to more rapidly identify the key problem or opportunity and address it rather than wasting time on solving the wrong problem.”Dominique Pomario, HR Manager, Recruitment & Development, Flight Centre Australia

“Quite simply, SCQuARE works. After we introduced it, incredibly 9 out of 10 targets have been won! SCQuARE has proved a great sales tool.”Rod Hyde, Head Of Consumer Finance, HSBC Australia

“I'm surprised to report that this is the single, best training of this type that I've ever attended. Many courses are useful, some are even interesting, but this one's value for the time spent is unparalleled. Thank you! We need to implement this corporate-wide.”Debra Barker, Global Head of Clinical and Medical Services, Novartis A.G.

“From my perspective, the benefits of SCQuARE for us have been threefold: improved critical thinking skills, a consistent way to frame a business case for action, and more efficient communications and decision-making.”Don DeGolyer, President, Sandoz USA

“SCQuARE enabled us to work through one of our most difficult challenges … The creation of a Global Brand Import model for Wal-Mart … this is now done and set to deliver an instant ROI.”JC Jove, VP Global Accounts, PepsiCo

“SCQuARE is a near-perfect tool for strategic planning.”Seni Adetu, Group Managing Director & CEO, East African Breweries Limited

“I think we all agree that this is a wonderful workshop for us to map out strategy for Revlon China. All of this is done collaboratively and intensively.”Edward Yu, General Manager, Revlon, China

“SCQuARE enabled us to achieve in four days what would normally take six months!”David Teasdale, SVP & Asia Managing Director, Revlon

“I first came to experience SCQuARE back in 2008 when I was working with another organization as head of training. I was delightfully surprised that the elements of SCQuARE were quite similar to what I practised in the Army, called Combat Appreciation. SCQuARE gives me breadth and depth in looking at issues and providing the platform for me to process my thoughts to influence my stakeholders. Hence, in January 2013, I was fortunate to be able to share this experience with my new team members in PETRONAS, and was happy to note, they feel the same way too.”Noor Iskandar Hashim, Director, Advanced Leadership Development Division, PETRONAS Leadership Centre, Malaysia

“SCQuARE is the best formal training course that I have attended in my career. It changed the way I think about problems, enabling better solutions and making the process much quicker and less painful. I wish everyone had this knowledge, so that we can save time on endless discussions … SCQuARE eliminates these vicious circles.”Igor Makarov, Vice President, Chief Marketing Officer, The Walt Disney Company CIS LLC, Russia

“Attending the SCQuARE programme will go down as one of the most memorable events in my career.”Rajdeep Dattagupta, Planning Director, Pepsi, India

“Ross Lovelock is a very clever and experienced consultant with whom I have worked in the past. His methods are innovative, creative and, above all, work to the benefit of his clients. Any book by Ross is as good as a book by the great Dr Eliyahn Goldratt.”Professor Malcolm McDonald, Emeritus Professor, Cranfield School of Management

“Ross is an inspirational leader of change. He truly has a unique style that engages, challenges and inspires people to be better leaders in today’s complex and challenging business world.”Simon Hay, Global CEO, dunnhumby

This edition published in 2013 by John Wiley & Sons Ltd

© 2013 Ross Lovelock

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Previous editions published in 2007 and 2012 by SQUARE International Limited.

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A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978-1-118-65316-6 (paperback)

ISBN 978-1-118-75567-9 (ebk) ISBN 978-1-118-75566-2 (ebk)

DEDICATION

To David Jones, Peter Kendall and Wayne Mailloux

Three mentors who gave me a chance in my career when nobody

else would. Without their help and friendship I would not have

started SCQUARE and this book would not have been written.

‘I've got a lunchtime presentation tomorrow and my boss says he expects the usual tripe. Do you have any?’

Foreword from Justin King

Chief Executive, J. Sainsbury Plc

Many highly intelligent people are poor thinkers. Many people of average intelligence are skilled thinkers. The power of a car is separate from how it is driven.

Edward de Bono

AT the heart of most businesses are people. In competitive markets, the organisations that win are those that are best at listening to and communicating with people.

Dialogue with customers is widely recognised as critical for business success. It is generally accepted that the organisation that is not listening to its customers is doomed to failure.

Equally important is dialogue with colleagues. Listening to colleagues is central to our way of working at Sainsbury's, whether via our ‘Tell Justin’ suggestion scheme or via the everyday discussions and projects of our management teams.

We have found that to help these management discussions and projects to be really productive – to help our people get everyone on the same page and get to yes – our managers benefit from a common and structured approach.

We have engaged the services of SCQUARE International over a number of years and the SCQuARE process is an extremely sound approach to ensuring that ideas, strategies and plans are robustly developed.

Importantly, when the SCQuARE process is shared more widely then it helps the alignment levels within the business. But, above all, SCQuARE ensures that the really bright ideas and plans get through the corporate maze to the top and this means better business, more motivated people and greater value creation.