People have come from all over the world to attend our CEO Boot Camp

THE two day CEO Boot Camp plus an optional two day strategic planning workshop held at a beautiful resort

March 17th to 20th in Sedona, Arizona

(Attend either or both two day sessions at a discount)

The first two days is just like any other CEO Boot Camp then:

The Strategic Planning Program with workshop

This is a complete process with all the tools needed for your annual and quarterly strategic planning and execution. A professional strategic planning facilitation costs $20,000 to $30,000 or more and you get all the tools you need to do this every year yourself with your team.  This event also includes all the systems for monthly and quarterly monitoring and adjustment that will keep your team and company on track.  You can take all the tools with you and use them each year.

You will also get input from many other CEOs. You will leave with a greatly improved business strategy, plan and vision. Start with your current plan or start fresh.  We recommend you bring your laptop for this event but it is not required.

More Information

April 16th to 17th in Atlanta, Georgia
Event at Technology Association of Georgia (TAG) Headquarters

Georgia Tech Hotel
(below & across the street)

Wyndham Midtown Atlanta
(a few blocks away)

C-Level Boot Camp for Vice Presidents and other senior executives who are not CEOs
April 1st - 2nd in San Francisco
at Software Business SaaS and SLAM Conference

See all CEO Boot Camp dates

Other Resources For CEOs and Rapid Growth Companies

Archive of selected issues of The C-Level
Advisor

DVDs and Audio CDs For CEOs

Our Corporate 360 Program to help a
company to shift gears to the next level of management for more rapid growth

CEO Level Consulting

CEO Coaching

   The CEO & Entrepreneur Boot Camp

The CEO Boot Camp
Advanced Entrepreneurship and Leadership Training For
Technology & Growth
Company CEOs

Discover an integrated system of best practices gathered from hundreds of top leadership and management texts and Bob Norton's 18+ years as a CEO. This two-day event is a complete system at the 30,000-foot strategic level that goes across all key business disciplines needed for success including: sales, marketing, product development, management, marketing, operations, finance, hiring and roadmaps to shift management gears for each company stage of development.

Visit us here for an audio preview of what you will get from the Boot Camp:
http://www.clevelbootcamp.com/audiopreview.htm

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The C-Level Advisor

Is Your Annual Strategic Plan Being Executed Properly?

Strategic Planning and the Systems Needed to Manage It For Small Businesses
By Bob Norton, author, speaker and CEO Coach

When I work with a company to help get them growing faster I usually find that the strategic planning process is lacking, or even nonexistent. It is critical that any company with more than about a dozen people has an annual strategic planning process.  This can be abbreviated for very small companies but still must be done.  Even companies that have a decent strategic plan are most often missing the management systems to follow-up on the plan's progress and keep people on track.  Up to 80% of results are often based on the 10% to 15% for management and planning.  The plan is what aligns the mission and goals and allows people to make day-to-day decisions that are consistent with longer-term corporate objectives.  The other systems are needed to keep people focused, on track, accountable and in alignment as you execute.

The strategic plan is the foundation of the annual and quarterly goals that make people and departments much more effective. In fact research shows that companies that have a goal oriented Management By Objective (MBO) system create 56% more value annually that those that do not have this kind of system in place.  

With a small management team of three or four people it is not a very difficult process really.  If you want to grow fast, and/or even be a quality small company you need these system starting at about 15 to 25 people. Without these the "wheels will fall off the wagon" as you move from 25 to 60MPH.  Companies can struggle with this "gear shift" for years and entirely miss their market window of opportunity.  Each system element shown above reinforces the others creating a holistic and professional management system that is extremely effective and supports rapid growth.  Doing all these things will make your company a market leader instead of just another competitor.

The trick to a good strategic plan is to look at the longer-term (at least a year) in the context of a 3-5 year vision for the company.  As the company gets bigger the time invested will need to enlarge also, but either way that investment will pay big dividends and needs to be done. A strategic plan need to be executed and supported with all these systems to be very successful.

Our job as the CEO and also as senior executives is to:

1. Develop the strategic plan with the input and expertise in each key area of the business - The annual Strategic Planning process with quarterly adjustments as needed
2. Communicate the plan and "vision" to all (at the level each audience can understand)   - MBO and staff meetings
3. Hire and develop the best people - A process for a high success rate in hiring
4. Provide the management team with the resources needed (vision, budgets and capital etc.)
5. Monitor progress and ensure ongoing communications and adjustments (MBOs and dashboards)
6. Perform ongoing oversight, training and coaching to develop the staff (all of these system support this goal) - An employee development system with education and coaching to help them grow with the company

The systems shown above ensure superior performance compared to the "average" company.   At a certain size your management systems become the critical thing to extend your vision and philosophy to leverage a larger staff. Many companies get "stuck" near $1-$2 million in sales because they do not know how to shift from raw entrepreneurship and seat of the pants management to professional management systems. This is also why so many CEO founders are pushed aside when venture capitalists invest big bucks.

Ask yourself these questions:

1. Do you have a clear vision of what your company will look like on December 31st of this year?  Does everyone in the company understand that vision appropriate to their level and area?  How much revenue? How many people in each department? How many new hires are needed and when this year? What kinds of new customers, products and services are coming and when?
2. What new processes, systems and people will be needed to allow smooth growth? 
3. Do you have system to hold people accountable for performance and also make visible the people and areas that are not performing to make corrections?
4. Do you have measurable milestones to check progress against the plan monthly and quarterly and make adjustments?
5. Does everyone understand the relative priorities of various projects and how they may impact others if they fall behind or get put on hold?
6. Is each department communicating independently and not relying on you as CEO to alert everyone to every change and dependency?
   
   

If you and your team can answer "yes" to the above questions consistently then you are probably in the top five or ten percent of companies in terms of professional management. If not you need to begin to adopt more professional management best practices.  Of course, there are decades of proven management science that have developed these best practices that you should be leveraging. Don't reinvent the wheel and expect you can create these management systems on your own. Instead use proven practices.  Creating these on your own would be like expecting Henry Ford to develop the 2008 Maserati instead of the Model T right out of the box as the first mass production car.

The result of good strategic planning and monitoring of progress will pay at least ten-fold the cost in time. Without this the daily decisions can be driven by a personal agenda, or a bad interpretation of what is important to the company that day. Strategic Planning and these other system ensure not only communications but also the priority levels of each objective. 

Bob Norton, the CEO Coach, is the author of four books on starting and running companies and entrepreneurship. He runs the exclusive CEO & Boot Camp to help CEOs and senior executives cut years off their learning curve. He also coaches many CEOs at growth oriented technology companies with between $500K and $50MM in sales on how to get to the next level. He can be contacted at Bob@CLevelEnterprises.com.