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US-based software and cloud services company Virtual Technology Corporation was doing just alright. Things were in place, and sales were all steady. For a company enabling virtualization for its innumerable clients, it was the very definition of a smooth sail.
However, for a company of that mindset, it’s not the smooth sail but the optimal performance that matters the most. Pursuing that target, the firm junked the 100 different things it was doing with its resources and planning and incorporated a one-frame mindset to get everyone on the same page.
The result — the company was able to surpass its sales goal by 1.4 million USD.
This is precisely the power that a one-page strategic plan holds. Understanding the influence of short and sweet can bring phenomenal success to your company if you execute it right.
So here’s our quick guide on everything you need to know about a one-page strategic plan and how it can carry you from smooth to spectacular. The guide also offers handy PowerPoint templates to get you started with crafting your own one-page strategic plan and reap the rewards of a unified vision powered by succinct communication. Read on!
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One-page strategic plan: A primer
A one-page strategic plan or OPSP is a single-page document enlisting an organization’s goals and objectives along with the procedures to be undertaken to accomplish them. An OPSP gives your employees a brief overview of the who, what, when, where, why, how, should, and shouldn’t of your company. This way, an OPSP supersedes guesswork as well as ambiguity in achieving the organizational goals.
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Additionally, an OPSP minimizes the need for multiple business documents dictating the targets to different teams. Instead, it aligns the entire team towards a single target while providing directions and setting accountability for optimal performance.  Â
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Visionary entrepreneurs often refer to an OPSP as a tool to make accurate decisions quickly. In fact, they use OPSP as a blueprint for achieving scalable ventures. An OPSP is their permanent asset pinned to a vision board that helps them and their employees overcome challenges. Besides, it helps them in deciding on the pursuits worth pursuing.
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Benefits of having an OPSP
Why have an OPSP anyway? If your startup is doing just fine with regular 60-slide information during meetings, why bother with conciseness, right?
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Wrong!
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In fact, the before and after snapshots of an organization look vastly different when OPSP comes into the picture. Here’s why your company needs this document.
OPSP boosts communication
We all are guilty of fading attention spans. If you keep running the same 60-slide PowerPoint presentation in your monthly meetings, it will eventually lead to attention saturation. An OPSP condenses valuable information into a skimmable format. Think of it as a ready-reckoner that you and your team can use to grasp essential details at a glance. Quick and clear communication on the go!
It propagates and magnifies your company values
You will not be having a one-hit-wonder with an OPSP. Instead, you will have a business that hits every target it sets its eyes on. That is because a one-page strategic plan keeps your team aligned with your organization’s core values and mission. A document showing this well-targeted approach can serve as an emblem of representation of the company, be it funding or collaboration with your peers.
OPSP saves resources
The distillation of information from an instructional manual to a one-page strategic plan has two-pronged benefits. Putting together an OPSP with critical pieces of data takes less time than assembling slides for a presentation or pages of a manual. Moreover, OPSP enables quick reception and retention of information that saves resources otherwise spent on re-communication and training.
It steers you away from potential damage
Business owners often tend to do everything while strategizing. But they do not understand that they cannot accomplish everything or make a product for everybody. An OPSP keeps these impulses in check and prevents business owners from making harmful decisions. It clarifies the scope of the business and the reasons for its existence. So when in doubt about a decision, an OPSP is your go-to reference.
Components of One-Page Strategic Plan
It’s time to get your pen and pad and start building your own customized OPSP. All you need is a few quick steps, a list of your must-haves, and the skill to put all that in a single frame. Let’s describe each component of a well-devised OPSP as cohesive blocks and assemble them to make your perfect template resource (that you can download with a click at the end).
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- Mission: This is your purpose. The why of your company’s existence. Your BHAG (big hairy audacious goal). The reason for your hustle. Include your mission statement in this section.
- Vision: This is the breakdown of where you want to be in the next, say, five years. It’s the gist of your current and future objectives. Write down the ‘where’ of your business in this section.
- Core beliefs: These are the values you swear by. They are the lens through which you see yourself, your business, the world, and the future. Include your guiding principles in this section.
- Competitive advantage: What’s your distinguishing factor? How do you see yourself as separate from your peers and competitors? What makes you the customer’s preference? Include the answers to these in this section.
- Strategic targets: What do you need to do to realize your vision? This section comprises the chunks of activities you need to undertake in line with qualified and quantifiable targets for the next six months. Â
- KPIs: What are your criteria to measure the accomplishment of the targets? The key performance indicators, or KPIs, give your team the framework of assessing their performance against the strategic activities.
- Accountability: What does your contribution to the company strategy boil down to? This section contains the mention of the personal contribution of each team member to exhibit the values reflected in the OPSP.
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Putting together points 1 to 7 on a single page will give you the simplest and the most effective OPSP template as follows. Click to download and get started.
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Some OPSP templates to get you started
At SlideTeam, we understand that each company has a different vision for each functional component of the business. An OPSP can serve as a reference point for the entire business and help guide each of these components as a cross-functional collaboration tool. Therefore, we have put together five actionable and straightforward one-page strategic plan templates in PowerPoint to help you devise the long-term plan for your corporate success journey.
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Besides the aesthetic appeal and concise format, a significant feature of these templates is that they are completely editable. That means you can make innumerable changes to them and create a personalized document for your entire company to follow within minutes. So check out these templates and download the ones that suit your requirement the best. Â
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Template 1
This is a one-page strategic plan template for giving a comprehensive overview of each grain of the company. This PowerPoint template delineates the company’s vision and breaks down the crucial points of market research. Besides, it presents the company’s marketing strategy in line with the long-term goals and each employee’s contribution in the furtherance of that strategy. This template is best suited for those working in a product-heavy ecosystem. Download this template in a few clicks and start personalizing it.Â
Template 2
Here’s another PowerPoint template that leverages the power of concise and quick communication. This template imparts a workable structure for your company’s strategic operations with the help of tactical procedures, resource optimization, and risk mitigation. It also gives the roadmap to execute each function in line with the organizational goals. Additionally, this template monitors and controls channels of communication for collaboration and sustainable growth.
Template 3
Here’s another one-page strategic plan template to help you regulate the political, economic, educational, social, and technological (PEEST) factors influencing your business. In addition, this PPT template gives a comprehensive depiction of your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT). You can incorporate this template and stay better prepared for impending risks. Download this template now and get started with planning for a spectacular performance. Â
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Template 4
This OPSP template is a tailored solution for companies looking to drive more sales with well-informed planning. The template helps you outline your targets for a particular fiscal and allocate resources appropriately to bring in more revenue. Besides, this PPT template contains tabulated information that you can personalize to reflect your strategic initiatives for each quarter of the year. Download this template right away and set your eyes on the big prize. Â
Template 5
This is another PowerPoint template that can help you craft a simple yet effective one-page strategic plan. A unique feature of this design is the tabulated structure classified according to the component of the company it represents. The layout makes it easy to spell out your company’s goals, objectives, strategies, and activities per the targets and available human capital. It also opens new avenues of improving business performance with the help of technological updates. So download this template now and give your organization the perfect vision to follow.Â
Conclusion
As cliché as it sounds, if you fail to plan, you plan to fail. However, if you put your plan in a digestible framework, you will see stellar results faster. Devising a one-page strategic plan always works out in your favor in one way or another. Moreover, it helps set benchmarks and imparts a unified purpose horizontally as well as vertically. An OPSP gives you the ammunition to accomplish all targets with logically distilled information, thereby letting you aim high and become mighty.
So if you wish to make succinct your success mantra, feel free to download our OPSP templates. In case you want to explore more of our choicest designs, check out this blog post. And if it is perfection that you seek, you can always reach out to our design team. They will put together an OPSP that will make your entrepreneurial dreams a reality.  Â
