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Make Plan

By Laurence B. Valant & Andy Bowen

The greatest source of frustration, failure and heartbreak for CEOs is their inability to make plan on time and on budget – their failure to execute. This book outlines the five steps to effectively executing:

Establishing quantifiable, measurable and attainable objectives
Identifying any and all obstacles to meeting the objectives
Implementing the strategies to address and overcome the obstacles to achieve the objectives
Determining the organization needed to execute the strategies
Implementing a compensation model based on residual income by business unit and used to reward all levels of management and staff.

The reality of making plan on time and on budget every month is detailed in this easy to read book. The first book written by Larry Valant, Make Plan should be required reading for every company owner or CEO.
That's the message hammered home in Make Plan! with Effective Execution, a new business performance improvement book by Laurence B. "Larry" Valant and Andrew Bowen, published by Clearview Communications Inc., and available now on this website for $18.95.

At 184 pages in 14-point type, Make Plan! has been designed by its authors to be an easy read on a business trip or quiet weekend afternoon. It is written in a style that allows the reader to imagine actually having an enjoyable conversation with Valant, a former Marine and CEO of several companies who has more than 30 years of experience increasing profits for businesses of all kinds. However, Valant, Bowen and the rest of the Valant & Company consulting team will tell you the book provides only a glimpse of the dedication, absolute commitment, and sweat equity that must be invested to leverage the Valant Execution Model to its fullest potential.

Starting with complete buy-in and ongoing support from the Chief Executive Officer, the model must become part of the culture of the enterprise in order to achieve total organizational accountability that inevitably will lead to ongoing effective execution. The entire process starts with the CEO's vision of where the company should be within a set timeframe.

Under the Valant Execution Model, the five steps, or tiers, that must be thoroughly examined and for which action plans and goals must be developed are:

Objectives
Obstacles
Strategies
Organization
Compensation

Valant's book explains that once outcomes have been agreed upon and perfected for these five tiers of the business enterprise, interlocking goals supporting realization of the outcomes are developed for all managers. Total accountability is achieved by requiring managers – from the CEO on down to the loading dock supervisor – to report in groups weekly (without fail!) on how they are meeting their personal deliverables designed to support successful achievement of theirs, their peers' and the organization's goals.

Weekly measurement of performance is managed by a document Valant has dubbed the 13-Week Commitment Plan. Every manager has his/her own personalized commitment plan that quantifies performance weekly against specific deliverables. However, the beauty of the process is that everyone's plan supports everyone else's up and down the entire management chain. Thus, the CEO's vision is known to and supported by all managers.

One hugely positive result of this system is that everyone is talking to everyone else about how they are meeting their interlocking quantitative goals each and every week for phases of a full quarter each, so there are few surprises (and, performance reviews take only 10 minutes). It is unambiguous communication at its best, and that results in people talking about sensitive issues that everyone was afraid (embarrassed, timid, intimidated, apathetic, whatever) to talk about before the model was adopted. These overlooked and avoided issues having to do with personnel, operational, financial or material matters are like elephants on the conference room table – everyone knows they are there, but no one wants to acknowledge their presence, much less herd them from the room.

After reading this informative, entertaining and educational book by Valant and Bowen, you can begin to get rid of your own elephants and start thinking about how you can chart your organization's course toward predictable business success.

Valant, who has lectured at the Goizueta School of Business at Emory University, also has clients in Atlanta, Denver, Chicago, Los Angeles and other U.S. cities.

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Make Plan

By Laurence B. Valant & Andy Bowen