Welcome to Part 2! Here’s where we dot all the ‘i’s and cross all the ‘t’s. We’ll be talking about roles, workflows, campaigns, technology and much more. But I don’t think we should be satisfied to examine these building blocks in a vacuum. After all, Part 2 is all about practice, not theory. Accordingly, it’s… “The Machine > Part 2 > Chapter 7: Formulating a plan”
We commence with the direction of the solution (division of labor) and four key principles. On an otherwise blank sheet of paper, we have a single salesperson. Yesterday, our sales function essentially consisted of a single salesperson. Tomorrow, sales will be the responsibility of a tightly synchronized team. Principle 1: centralize scheduling Our first principle… “The Machine > Part 1 > Chapter 3: Re-envisioning the sales function”
Today, on Harvard Business Review Online, Peter Bregman argues: why not having a plan can be the best plan of all. Of course, this is just the latest salvo in a long-running battle between the traditionalists – for whom no plan is ever detailed enough – and the now generation – who see planning as… “Why ‘plan’ versus ‘don’t plan’ is a false alternative”
Recently I posted a quick-and-dirty guide to process improvement. One particularly difficult question that I skipped over in that post was this one: When you are mapping your workflow, how do you determine the ideal level of granularity? In other words, how much detail is too much? Conventional wisdom is that: Planning and execution are… “Why better planning equals poorer execution”
