Chapter 6: Step 6 Build the Business Case

Overview

"Aim for success, not perfection . Never give up your right to be wrong, because then you will lose the ability to learn new things and move forward with your life."

DR. DAVID M. BURNS

GOALS FOR STEP 6:

1. Build a work-breakdown structure of tasks and timelines .

2. Create the cost-savings formulas and required budget.

3. Name the initiative and develop a marketing plan.

4. Build a tailorable business case.

 

The strategic plan is a detailed document that defines your research, goals, and the execution plans necessary to transform your company into a learning organization. It's likely to be hundreds of pages long and filled with difficult-to-follow training jargon, statistics, and budgetary formulas. It's an invaluable record of your efforts and intentions, but it's not the document that will win the understanding and support of your executive team.

The business case, on the other hand, is the tactical sales presentation that you build around your strategic plan. It is a living, breathing showcase of your goals, and it determines whether you get the goahead for your initiative. It's the strategic plan reinvented as an appealing, easy-to-digest presentation focusing on the "what's in it for me" factor for any audience.

Taking what you know and what you've recorded in your strategic plan, you will create a business-case document that provides an overview of what your initiative will do for the company if management supports it. At its foundation is an overview of your written strategy revamped to highlight key points that will be appealing to specific groups and will demonstrate the value of your project. Blended within your goals is the story of the transformation process that must occur if you are to revolutionize your corporate culture and transform the company into a learning organization.

All of your research and hard work will have been a waste of time if you ignore this step or approach it with minimal effort, because your success hinges on your ability to sell the project to a broad variety of vested interests within your organization.