Flat management practice, ask your managers to draft their own dept. business plan and budget.

Ask your managers to draft their own department business plan, and supporting budget, what a terrific exercise and what great benefits will be realized by all involved.

Remember the idea is to create a team approach to management, as flat a hierarchy as possible. If you have department heads, say sales and marketing, operations and finance, while you have written and determined the overall plan, each manager should be deeply involved in his own division planning and since he knows intimately what works and what does not work, what a huge opportunity to ask them for their ideas and plans.

What would they do given the opportunity to chart this years course?

I would start with a meeting to explore the parameters, being careful not to poison their thinking with your ideas, which should be well known anyway, but it is appropriate to establish the guidelines so everyone works within the same parameters. Let them determine the program, the strategies and the plans required to be implemented to produce the desired results, see what creative thinking you will have inspired.

Better yet have them determine their budget based on their plan. What do they need to get to where the want to go. This is called zero based budgeting, rather then starting with last years budget and adding on a bit here and there, so one can spend more, ask them to determine a budget from zero base, requiring them to create the best possible plan and cost it out so the budget reflects a real plan.

The results will be terrific as certainly you the owner will learn things and see strategies which you have overlooked and a man dedicated to this one part of your business may see clearer and finer.

Additionally consider the effect on the manager, as it becomes more of his plan and he is now willing to defend his thinking and plan and budget and he will have invested himself into the program and will do anything it takes to have it work as he projected. Thus you end up with three department plans and your overall plan.

In a follow up meeting with all three managers, you then play the roll of mediator and integrate all three plans into one coherent plan with three budgets. This will work better then doing it all yourself and then asking your managers to implement it. This approach has their input and their budgets as well as the benefit of all three managers then reviewing each others work and making it all fit together.

Thats a plan that has power and precision. Launch that baby, its bound to work better then your own plan done without the input of your three key managers. As well, consider the enormous job satisfaction experienced by your managers and the pleasure and enrichment they will feel when you show them the respect of including them in planning the roll out for the new year. They will stop at nothing to make certain it succeeds and then watch their self esteem, confidence and pride build.

You will have successfully begun to build a real team effort. Call me for help 413-549-2966.