Play your "chips" right and you could have a winning business.

In preparing to start new businesses, it’s not a bad idea to talk to friends, relatives, and acquaintances about their experiences. Find out what worked well for them and what didn’t, so you don’t have to make the same mistake over again.

Recently my husband and I were talking to a friend that has had a business for over 20 years. We asked him about what software he uses, etc., but the best bit of information he gave us was the one line strategic plan idea.

When you start up a business you go to a lot of work and thought to produce a business plan, or at least you should. Once that’s done some people will summarize that in a one page strategic plan.

However, our friend suggested taking that even a step further and summarizing the summary in one line. He gave us the example of an earth moving company, that was coming in from out of the country, that wanted to compete and win against Caterpillar. Well that’s a tall order for an unknown company. How did they do it? They came up with a one line strategic plan or motto you could say. Everything that every employee in the company did was measured against this motto. If it supported the motto it was implemented, if it didn’t it was scrapped. Their motto was “number 2 surrounds number 1.” This implied that everything they did was to try and make all business going to Caterpillar have to go through them first. In just a couple years they had taken 38% of the market away from Caterpillar.

So, what’s your businesses one line strategic plan? Oh, by the way, you should share this with any of your competitors. They might like it and start using it too, and/or plan to thwart you with their own motto.