A battle plan is a set of targets for tomorrow or the week ahead, and it does two things at once. It advances the long-range planning, and it handles what is blocking it right now. An ordinary task list usually does only the second.
The two halves of a battle plan
According to the source, a battle plan advances something bigger than itself and, at the same time, handles what stands in the way. Both parts have to be there.
An ordinary task list does only the second half. That is why you can check off every line on it and finish the week with a business that has gone nowhere.
Suppose a woman who bakes cakes from home writes down every Sunday which orders she has, what she needs to buy, and which customers need a message. The first week she skips the list, she forgets an order. It hasn't happened since.
Or a physiotherapy clinic with three therapists that starts a fixed Thursday meeting. Within two months the calendar is full.
On the page, the difference between the two kinds of list looks small. Over a year it is the difference between a business that moved in a direction and a business that was busy all the time and can't point to one direction that advanced.
The step almost everyone skips
The source names one error explicitly as the mark of someone untrained in planning: going from the purpose straight to tactical planning and leaving out the strategic stage that belongs between them. That route fails.
In small-business terms, you have a purpose, say fast service, and a list of chores for the week. Missing in between is one decision: which direction the business is moving in over the coming quarter. Without it the list fills with whatever is urgent, and every week pulls somewhere else.
The distinction is easy to remember. Tactical planning wins a battle, and strategic planning wins the war.
Suppose a yoga studio that settles its audience and purpose, then picks a direction for the quarter, and writes weekly battle plans only after that. The owners don't jump straight to what to teach this week.
The opposite is an owner whose task list is full every week and who can't find, at the end of the year, one direction that advanced. The work was real. It was just pulled somewhere new each week.
Before blaming, check the handoff
The booklet has a short weekly format with four items, which suits a business of two and still works at ten. One question from it is worth having here, because it changes how you look at a target that wasn't done.
When a target isn't done, one question comes before the blame: did the order ever reach the person meant to carry it out? Sometimes it got stuck on the way. Then the problem is in the handoff, and the execution was never tested.
Suppose a garage where a target went undone because the mechanic had never heard of it. It was given to the shift supervisor, who then left on vacation.
Or a studio owner who adds a fixed line to the weekly meeting about what didn't get passed on, and discovers three things stuck in transit, with nobody on the doing end.
The question changes the conversation. Instead of working out whose fault it is, you first check where the order stopped.
Two sayings about execution
The source offers several rules of thumb for planning, and two suit a small business. The first: “Some idea, even if badly executed, is better than no idea at all.” The second says that a program, the sequence of targets behind a plan, has to be carried out in order to be effective.
The second sounds obvious and holds more than it seems. The value of a plan is measured in carrying it out, and its quality on paper counts for less. A mediocre plan in motion beats an excellent plan that waits for its next version.
Suppose an owner postpones a launch by three months to do it properly. A competitor launches a worse version and gets to learn from it twice before he has started.
Compare a designer who releases a partial working process and corrects it as she goes. A month later it is better than anything she would have designed in advance.
What the booklet has on this
In the booklet From Goal to Target, you get the full weekly format, followed by two exercises, build it and do it, which leave you with a plan for the coming week. The last chapter connects the whole ladder in one area of the business.
A list where you can check off everything and not move is a list with no direction. A battle plan starts from the direction.