organizational plan example in business plan

Business Plan Organization and Management: How to Write Guide .

Sep 17, 2023 | Business Consulting , Business Plan , Organization and Management , Organizational Development , Strategy

Writing the Business Plan Organization and Management Section

It provides critical information for those looking for evidence that your staff has the necessary experience, skills, and pedigree to realize the objectives detailed in the rest of your business plan.

What Is the Organization and Management Section in a Business Plan?

The organization and management section of your business plan should provide details about your business structure and team. This section typically comes after the executive summary. However, some people have it further in the document after the market analysis section.

This section generally is separated into two parts. The first concerns the organization as a whole. It gives readers an overview of the company structure, which is an excellent opportunity for the reader to lift the roof off your office and peer into its inner workings. For your legal design, you may set up as a limited liability company (LLC) or nonprofit/ charity or form a partnership. It’s crucial to include this section. However, suppose you’re starting a home business or have an already operating business where you’re the only person involved. In that case, you can skip this section or show the company registration details from either the company’s house or the awarding .gov.

The second part focuses specifically on your management team and introduces readers to each member — your chance to impress them with the many accomplishments pinned to your organization’s management team.

This section may seem less important than some of the other parts of your business plan, but the truth is that your people are your business. If they’re highly competent and accomplished, the implication is that so is your business.

Of course, if you’re a sole proprietor with no management structure or any employees, this section is unnecessary other than to talk about yourself and your achievements.

The section on organization and management should outline the hierarchy, individual roles, and corresponding responsibilities. It should also highlight each person’s strengths and qualifications for their positions.

Business Plan Organization Section

The organizational section of your business plan outlines the hierarchy of individuals involved in your business, typically in a chart format. This section identifies the President or CEO, CFO, Director of Marketing, and other roles for partnerships or multi-member LLCs. If you’re a single-person home business, this section is straightforward as you are the only person on the chart.

Although this section primarily focuses on owner members, you can include outsourced workers or virtual assistants if you plan to hire them. For example, you may have a freelance web admin, marketing assistant, or copywriter. You may even have a virtual assistant who coordinates with your other freelancers. While these individuals are not owners, they hold significant responsibilities in your business.

There are various business structures, such as sole proprietorships, partnerships, LLCs, and corporations.

Detail the Legal Structure within the Business Plan Organization and Management Section

Here is an indicative list of business structures. It would help if you talked to your accountant and legal advisors to determine which legal form is the best for your business proposition.

Sole Proprietorship

When embarking on a business venture, it’s essential to consider the various structures available. A sole proprietorship is a structure whereby the business is not regarded as separate from its owner’s finances. The owner retains complete control and responsibility for the company. However, they are unable to sell stocks or bring in new owners. The business becomes a sole proprietorship if not registered under any other structure.

Partnership

When forming a partnership, it can either be a limited partnership (LP) or a limited liability partnership (LLP). One partner assumes most liability in a limited partnership (LP). In contrast, the other partners have limited liability and control over the business. Alternatively, in a limited liability partnership (LLP), all partners have limited liability from debts and actions of other partners, and there is no general partner.

Limited Liability Company

A limited company (LTD) or limited liability company (LLC) is a mixture of business structures that mixes aspects of partnerships and corporations. It offers limited personal liability to the owner and passes profits through to their tax returns.

Corporation

There are various types of corporate structures. A C-corporation enables the issuance of stock shares, pays corporate taxes instead of personal returns, and provides the highest level of personal protection from business activities. On the other hand, nonprofit corporations are similar to C corporations. However, they do not aim to make profits and are exempt from state or federal income taxes.

More information on company legal structures is available on UK.Gov and USA.SBA websites.

Describe Your Company’s Organizational Structure

This first step illustrates the positions in your organization’s employee hierarchy and how they all relate to each other.

This is usually done graphically as a guide, using an organizational chart, or “org chart” for short. People use a Microsoft tool, i.e., PowerPoint or Excel, to help.

Organization Charts typically follow a top-down hierarchy, starting with your CEO/ Managing Director in the top box at the top of the page. Lines extend down from that person’s name to boxes containing the terms of the CEO’s direct reports.

We have included an example organizational chart below for guidelines only.

Identify your business organization structure and list your team members’ strengths and skills.

Those managers then have lines extending to those who report to them, and so on, down to your lowest staff positions.

This section will give your readers a quick understanding of your management and governance structure, the size of your organization, and your lines of control and communication.

Describe your Team in your Business Plan Organization and Management Section

In your business plan’s Organization and Management section, please provide a detailed description of your team. Y ou will discuss the company’s management team, starting with the owners.

This section highlights who is involved in the running of your business and who are the support professionals. It also includes the roles and responsibilities of managers.

Suppose the company structure is a multi-owner arrangement or some other multi-owner arrangement. In that case, you’ll want to include information for every member and their percentage of ownership and ongoing involvement in the company.

It’s important to discuss how ownership interests are split, their responsibilities, what they did before securing their current position, and how they came to be involved with the company.

Here, it would help if you talked about some of your critical team members. These people are directly responsible for large portions of your business operations.

Owner/Manager/Members

Within your business o rganization and management section, y ou should introduce the team and talk about their experience, qualifications, previous companies and achievements, role in the company, and any special skills they bring with them. Please provide the following details for each owner, manager, or member of the business within your business plan:

• Percentage of ownership (if applicable)
• Level of involvement (active or silent partner)
• Type of ownership (e.g., stock options, general partner)
• Position in the company (CEO, CFO, etc.)
• Responsibilities and Duties
• Educational background
• Relevant experience and skills
• Previous employment history
• Skills that will benefit the business
• Awards or recognition received
• Compensation structure
• How each individual’s skills and experience will complement and contribute to the business’s success

Perhaps they’re an entrepreneur, business coach, exclusive advisor, or industry specialist to help you grow.

This is an ideal opportunity for companies with an Executive Board of Directors, Governance Structure, or Advisory Board to introduce them to your readers.

Executive Board

Having a board of directors is essential for your management team. Without one, you may be missing out on crucial information. This section includes details similar to those found in the ownership and management team sub-section, such as the names, areas of expertise, positions (if applicable), and involvement with the company of each board member.

Strategic Advisors

Suppose you’re looking for funding for your business or to fill a gap in your knowledge, or you may not have the funds to hire an executive board. In that case, you must inform potential partners and investors that you have a team of professionals assisting you. This includes lawyers, accountants, and any freelancers or contractors you may be working with. When listing these individuals, include their name, title, educational background, certifications, services they provide to your business, and their relationship with you (i.e., hourly rates, projects, retainer, as-needed, regular). Additionally, highlight their skills and experience that make them an asset to your team you need

Does anything else make them stand out as quality professionals (awards, past working with credible brands)?

Spotlight on the Wider Team Structure

Now, you’ve showcased the management team in its entirety. You can provide brief bios for hiring team needs or secondary members and talk at length about how the team’s combined skills complement each other and how they amplify the team’s effectiveness.

It’s also important to point out any gaps in the knowledge your team is currently suffering. Your readers will likely be savvy enough to pick up on existing holes.

Therefore, you’ll want to get ahead of these criticisms and demonstrate that you’re already aware of the positions and complementary skill sets your management team still requires and how you plan to address the knowledge gaps with future hires.

Do you need help writing your business plan o rganization and management section ? 

Every successful business plan should include the organization and management section, helping you communicate your legal structure and team.

Writing a business plan can seem overwhelming, especially when starting a small, one-person business. However, it can be a reasonably simple task. This section of the plan should be updated if there are any changes to the organization structure or team members, such as additional training, awards, or other resume changes that benefit the business.

Creating your comprehensive business plan takes planning, research, time, and a herculean effort. If, at any point, the work becomes too much to handle, we can step in to assist.

Do you want an expert “second opinion” before creating your business plan or financial forecasts? Let’s talk !

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Contact Noirwolf Consulting today using the website contact form or by emailing [email protected] or call us at +44 113 328 0868.

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Organizational planning: 5 steps to success

Empower your workforce development plans with talent assessments.

Companies that lack detailed organizational plans are planning to fail. You might think that “winging it” is a rarity, but this couldn’t be further from the truth – a survey from Bridges Consultancy found that only 48% of businesses achieve planning success.

So, how can you give your business the best possible chance of reaching its goals?

You need to create a solid organizational plan. 

Organizational planning enables you to enact your business strategy, clearly communicate objectives to every team member, and ensure you have a well-defined process. It also helps you account for contingencies should the worst happen.

Read on to learn how to elevate your company with an organizational plan and how skills testing can help you along the way.

Table of contents

What is organizational planning , the importance of organizational planning, what are the 4 types of organizational planning, 4 organizational plan examples, how to create an organizational plan: the 5 steps of organizational planning, organizational planning is the key to success, organization plan faqs.

Organizational planning is a map of your complex, long-term business objectives. It helps your organization define success, prepare for the future, and attain goals in shifting market conditions. An organizational plan in business planning also guides change management, organizational structure, and initiatives like company-wide restructuring .

However, nobody likes complicated plans. Good planning involves setting goals that are simple, measurable, and attainable – and involve contingency planning to mitigate risk.

In plain English, an organizational plan prevents your team from wandering aimlessly, unsure of roles, responsibilities, or expectations. 

Careful organizational planning avoids these problems. But what kind of planning is needed to steer the company in the right direction? 

To begin, a solid organizational plan improves your company’s performance and boosts your financial figures. Research backs us up by proving that businesses with strong plans are 16% more likely to succeed than their peers.

Organizational plans also clarify the roles and responsibilities of employees in your organization. 

For example, both your sales team and your support team strive to increase business revenue. With a strategic plan, everyone is clear that the sales team's role is to convert new customers, while the support team is responsible for keeping customers happy and upselling more profitable services.

Finally, a business organizational plan empowers your company to stay flexible with shifting markets and global disruption . You’re more resilient thanks to contingency plans, which enable you to follow a defined “plan B” when it comes to adopting new technology, launching innovative products and services, and filling new roles.

Okay, so what does an effective organizational plan look like? 

Let’s cover the four phases of organizational planning to give you a better idea.

1. Strategic planning

Every great business idea starts with a carefully considered strategy. 

Organizational strategic planning involves creating broad, long-term goals for your company. These goals should cover the long term, say the next five to ten years. An example of a strategic goal would be to “become the leading brand in terms of sales and brand recognition in the electronic consumer goods sector within five years.”

Strategy is usually overseen by senior management and C-level executives. A strategic plan rights the ship, setting the vision that the entire company needs to follow to achieve success over the long term.

2. Tactical planning

Next, you need to transform your high-level strategy into tactical steps that empower your organization to reach its long-term goals.

Your strategy consists of multiple tactical plans, each of which typically takes up to a year to complete. Middle managers generally establish objectives and guide their teams to accomplish them. 

Senior management uses metrics and key performance indicators (KPIs) to track progress and ensure that the executive tactical plans are inching the company closer to its final goal.

3. Operational planning

Operational planning sets up a roadmap at the departmental or team-specific level. These are the daily and monthly objectives to be checked off by finance, marketing, IT, sales, and other departments. 

Using the example strategic goal from above, an operational goal for marketing could be to “boost brand awareness by 0.5% each month.”

4. Contingency planning

Even the best plans can be derailed by unexpected market forces (e.g., a competitor launching an innovative new service) or a force majeure (e.g. a global war or pandemic.

This is why you must always prepare your organization to deal with uncertainty and the unknown with contingency planning.

Including meticulous risk management as part of your organizational plan helps you rise above your competitors when times get tough. It gives your people structure and processes to follow when the unexpected strikes.

Now that we’ve covered the definition of organizational plans and the four key types, let’s spend a few minutes examining four examples of organizational planning in action.

1. Workforce development planning

During workforce development planning, you identify and address current and future staffing needs. You typically implement talent planning strategies to enhance your employees’ skills, knowledge, and abilities to stay relevant in your industry and niche.

It begins by assessing the capabilities of your current workforce.

This translates into creating a comprehensive talent map for all employees, including your C-level team members. The goal is to understand your talent baseline, identify skills gaps, determine what kind of training workers require to acquire new skills , and whether you require external hires to meet your workforce needs.

But what’s the best way to assess the skills of your workers ? 

We highly recommend that you use a talent assessment tool, like our test library of more than 400 candidate-friendly skills and personality tests. This is a modern, efficient, and bias-free way to measure your people’s skills and pinpoint strengths and weaknesses within your workforce.

Ready to try it?

Sign up for the Test Gorilla free forever plan and start assessing your employees’ skills today.

Once you’ve established a skills baseline for your organization, it’s time to create two plans: a learning and development plan and a talent acquisition plan.

According to Emeritus, the value of a skill is cut in half about every four years, and the average skill half-life is constantly decreasing. Continuously upskilling your workforce and hiring top external talent helps you stay relevant, successful, and profitable.

Last but not least, you need to prepare skilled employees to jump into crucial vacant roles in the organization. This is a pivotal part of contingency planning because it gives you the ability to quickly fill roles that make or break your company. 

For example, if one of your executives suddenly leaves the business, you won’t need to panic and rush hiring. You can rely on your temporary (or permanent) in-house replacement thanks to your succession planning strategy .

2. Financial planning

Your organization can’t get far without a robust financial plan. Managing debt and reinvesting profits are two of the best ways to ensure your business is sustainable. 

A financial plan assesses and estimates your future revenue, profit margins, and expected expenses, including employee salaries. It also helps you research and evaluate strategic investments to strengthen your business and drive more revenue.

Financial analysts create these plans, so seek their recommendations about financial performance and how to optimize your overall decision-making processes.

3. Products and services planning

Your business wants to make its products and services more appealing to target audiences. However, to do so effectively, you need to be able to recognize gaps in the market and strategically create schemes that set your business apart from competitors . 

You should start by analyzing how your products and services are performing in your respective markets. Are they doing well, or are they struggling? 

Markets and trends also change, which means you need to be aware that you might need to adapt your products regularly to best serve your customers.

Once you determine the size of the gap, you can determine whether:

Your product is well-suited to your audience and doesn’t need updates for now

You need to modify your offering to better serve customer demands

You must innovate and launch another product or service

Developing an updated (or new) product or service requires extensive testing to achieve a solid product-market fit, so make sure to include this in your organization plan.

4. Expansion planning

A good business is always focused on growth. Hence, expansion plans identify growth opportunities and roadblocks your organization might face in its industry, helping you develop marketing strategies or other initiatives to take advantage of those opportunities and overcome the obstacles.

Expansions require hiring more people, using different approaches, and sometimes even developing new products and services. All of this requires a detailed business plan. 

You’re ready to start, so here are 5 steps to get you on the right track with organizational strategic planning:

Come up with a big picture strategic plan

Transform the strategic plan into practical steps

Plan your day-to-day operations

Execute daily operations and monitor performance

Adjust organizational planning

1. Come up with a strategic plan

A strategic plan involves business executives defining the company’s direction for a set period of time, usually 5 to 10 years, and is closely related to the organization’s mission. 

With a strategic plan, the company creates a defined qualitative goal such as “Become the industry leader in the Chicago real estate market” or “Create the most diverse workforce in our niche.” 

Data plays an integral role because reliable information guides you in making strategic decisions based on previous performance and market indicators. 

Ask yourself questions like “Have you tried to achieve a similar objective before? What were the results like?” 

Then, examine existing data and trends and conduct a SWOT analysis (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) to determine the path to success.

2. Transform the strategic plan into practical steps

With a tactical plan, you set clear milestones, checkpoints, and metrics that identify whether the company is going in the right direction. 

In the previous section, we mentioned two examples: 

Become the industry leader

Create the most diverse workforce in your niche

Both of these business goals are strategic and qualitative. To become an industry leader, you could make a tactical goal of creating and launching three new products in the next year. A long-term objective would be to increase your market share by 25%.

A tactical plan to create a diverse workforce would be to implement skills testing for the entire team within six months to reduce unconscious bias and increase overall diversity by 20% over the next year.

3. Plan your day-to-day operations

Now that we have concrete goals set, it’s time to plan out the roadmap for everyday operations and how to achieve them in your team’s workflows.

Let’s return to our previous example of an organizational plan that aims to create a highly diverse workforce. 

Here, we create a template for the specific tasks that can achieve the goal of increasing overall diversity by 20% in one year:

Tactical goal 1 : In the next six months, implement tools and processes that empower objective and fair hiring decisions

Find platforms that meet your requirements (for example, for skills testing, try out TestGorilla )

Switch to a structured interview process

Implement and assess the impact of the changes and talent assessments

For example, you could use this talent assessment test to assess human resource professionals and find staff committed to achieving diversity objectives:

For more example questions, see our full test preview.

Tactical goal 2 : Increase the number of women in the workforce by 20%

Use gender-neutral language when writing job descriptions

Make benefits relevant to women a key part of your employer branding 

Share salary and benefits information openly and develop a skills-based compensation system

Make sure your company is able to support moms at work

Tactical goal 3 : Create a diverse management team by increasing the presence of underrepresented groups by 10%

Create a leadership program that focuses on upskilling underrepresented groups and helping them gain the essential managerial skills

Rework your onboarding process to support workers with non-traditional backgrounds

Create a bias-free employee promotion policy

Once you have set these tasks, you need to create a roadmap with concrete timelines, task owners, and measurable KPIs.

4. Execute daily operations and monitor performance

Once your overall organizational plan is set, it’s time to implement all the planning from the previous steps to enable your organization to reach its strategic goals.

No matter how strong your strategic, tactical, and operational plans are, even the best plans fail if the execution isn’t right. 

We suggest you:

Monitor relevant analytics metrics to track targets and performance and ensure that employees are executing the plan correctly and have the right tools and support

Set benchmarks based on past project performance and available industry insights

Use communication and collaboration tools to stay in touch with managers and team leaders

Keep key stakeholders informed if performance is lagging behind expectations

Implement contingency plans if you start falling behind

5. Adjust organizational planning

The business world rarely goes entirely to plan (hence the importance of organizational planning and contingency measures). 

What should you do if you’re struggling to stay on track to reach your organization’s goals?

A successful business plan is continuously monitored and adapted based on the real world. You need to review, change, and iterate each level of your organizational plan to ensure your actions remain aligned with your strategic objectives. 

For example, if you’re struggling to attract diverse managerial applicants, you could update your action plan to include a budget for attending local industry events for underrepresented groups and networking with top talent.

No one succeeds 100% of the time, but by creating an organizational plan, you set yourself up for success and create a blueprint for building an all-star team.

No matter what the future brings, you’ll be able to respond and guide every area of your business, from product planning to workforce development. 

Speaking of workforce development, TestGorilla is here for all your employee planning needs thanks to our library of 400+ assessments that help you implement better talent acquisition and retention strategies.

Sign up for a demo or try our free forever plan to discover what TestGorilla can do for your organizational plan today!

To conclude this article, we answer three of the most commonly asked questions about organizational planning.

What purpose does an organizational plan serve?

An organizational plan outlines a company’s goals and objectives and how it intends to manage change and uncertainty. Organizational planning ensures companies make decisions that align with their strategic vision. 

At the granular level, it gives managers a blueprint for determining how each team member spends their time and how their effort helps the business achieve its overarching goals. 

What are the three levels of organizational planning?

The three levels of organizational planning are strategic, tactical, and operational. Strategic planning deals with long-term goals, while tactical planning breaks these down into achievable short-term goals. Operational planning revolves around the daily and monthly objectives for each department, linking them back to the longer-term goals.

However, there’s another critical level of organizational planning: contingency planning. Scroll up to the "What are the 4 types of organizational planning?" section to find out more.

What are the elements of the organizational planning process?

Develop an organizational strategic plan

Translate the strategic plan into shorter, tactical steps

Plan daily operations, activities, and measurable for departments and individual teams

Execute the strategy and continuously monitor the plan's progress

Make necessary adjustments

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Business Plan Section 3: Organization and Management

This section explains how your business runs and who’s on your team. Learn how to present the information in this section of your business plan.

This section of your business plan, Organization and Management, is where you’ll explain exactly how you’re set up to make your ideas happen, plus you’ll introduce the players on your team.

As always, remember your audience. If this is a plan for your internal use, you can be a little more general than if you’ll be presenting it to a potential lender or investor. No matter what its purpose, you’ll want to break the organization and management section into two segments: one describing the way you’ve set up the company to run (its organizational structure), and the other introducing the people involved (its management).

Business Organization

Having a solid plan for how your business will run is a key component of its smooth and successful operation. Of course, you need to surround yourself with good people, but you have to set things up to enable them to work well with each other and on their own.

It’s important to define the positions in the company, which job is responsible for what, and to whom everyone will report. Over time, the structure may grow and change and you can certainly keep tweaking it as you go along, but you need to have an initial plan.

If you’re applying for funding to start a business or expand one, you may not even have employees to fit all the roles in the organization. However, you can still list them in your plan for how the company will ideally operate once you have the ability to do so.

Obviously, for small businesses, the organization will be far more streamlined and less complicated than it is for larger ones, but your business plan still needs to demonstrate an understanding of how you’ll handle the workflow. At the very least, you’ll need to touch on sales and marketing, administration, and the production and distribution of your product or the execution of your service.

For larger companies, an organizational plan with well-thought-out procedures is even more important. This is the best way to make sure you’re not wasting time duplicating efforts or dealing with internal confusion about responsibilities. A smooth-running operation runs far more efficiently and cost-effectively than one flying by the seat of its pants, and this section of your business plan will be another indication that you know what you’re doing. A large company is also likely to need additional operational categories such as human resources and possibly research and development.

One way to explain your organizational structure in the business plan is graphically. A simple diagram or flowchart can easily demonstrate levels of management and the positions within them, clearly illustrating who reports to whom, and how different divisions of the company (such as sales and marketing) relate to each other.

Here is where you can also talk about the other levels of employees in your company. Your lower-level staff will carry out the day-to-day work, so it’s important to recognize the types of people you’ll need, how many, what their qualifications should be, where you’ll find them, and what they’ll cost.

If the business will use outside consultants, freelancers, or independent contractors, mention it here as well. And talk about positions you’d want to add in the future if you’re successful enough to expand.

Business Management

Now that we understand the structure of your business, we need to meet the people who’ll be running it. Who does what, and why are they onboard? This section is important even for a single practitioner or sole proprietorship, as it will introduce you and your qualifications to the readers of your plan.

Start at the top with the legal structure and ownership of the business. If you are incorporated, say so, and detail whether you are a C or S corporation. If you haven’t yet incorporated, make sure to discuss this with your attorney and tax advisor to figure out which way to go. Whether you’re in a partnership or are a sole owner, this is where to mention it.

List the names of the owners of the business, what percent of the company each of them owns, the form of ownership (common or preferred stock, general or limited partner), and what kind of involvement they’ll have with day-to-day operations; for example, if they’re an active or silent partner.

Here’s where you’ll list the names and profiles of your management team, along with what their responsibilities are. Especially if you’re looking for funding, make sure to highlight the proven track record of these key employees. Lenders and investors will be keenly interested in their previous successes, particularly in how they relate to this current venture.

Include each person’s name and position, along with a short description of what the individual’s main duties will be. Detail his or her education, and any unique skills or experience, especially if they’re relevant to the job at hand. Mention previous employment and any industry awards or recognition related to it, along with involvement with charities or other non-profit organizations.

Think of this section as a resume-in-a-nutshell, recapping the highlights and achievements of the people you’ve chosen to surround yourself with. Actual detailed resumes for you and your management team should go in the plan’s appendix, and you can cross-reference them here. You want your readers to feel like your top staff complements you and supplements your own particular skill set. You also want readers to understand why these people are so qualified to help make your business a success.

This section will spell out the compensation for management team members, such as salary, benefits, and any profit-sharing you might be offering. If any of the team will be under contract or bound by non-compete agreements, you would mention that here, as well.

If your company will have a Board of Directors, its members also need to be listed in the business plan. Introduce each person by name and the position they’ll hold on the board. Talk about how each might be involved with the business (in addition to board meetings.

Similar to what you did for your management team, give each member’s background information, including education, experience, special skills, etc., along with any contributions they may already have had to the success of the business. Include the full resumes for your board members in the appendix.

Alternately, if you don’t have a Board of Directors, include information about an Advisory Board you’ve put together, or a panel of experts you’ve convened to help you along the way. Having either of these, by the way, is something your company might want to consider whether or not you’re putting together the organization and management section or your business plan.

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How To Write the Management Section of a Business Plan

Susan Ward wrote about small businesses for The Balance for 18 years. She has run an IT consulting firm and designed and presented courses on how to promote small businesses.

Ownership Structure

Internal management team, external management resources, human resources, frequently asked questions (faqs).

When developing a business plan , the 'management section' describes your management team, staff, resources, and how your business ownership is structured. This section should not only describe who's on your management team but how each person's skill set will contribute to your bottom line. In this article, we will detail exactly how to compose and best highlight your management team.

Key Takeaways

• The management section of a business plan helps show how your management team and company are structured.
• The first section shows the ownership structure, which might be a sole proprietorship, partnership, or corporation.
• The internal management section shows the department heads, including sales, marketing, administration, and production.
• The external management resources help back up your internal management and include an advisory board and consultants.
• The human resources section contains staffing requirements—part-time or full-time—skills needed for employees and the costs.

This section outlines the legal structure of your business. It may only be a single sentence if your business is a sole proprietorship. If your business is a partnership or a corporation, it can be longer. You want to be sure you explain who holds what percentage of ownership in the company.

The internal management section should describe the business management categories relevant to your business, identify who will have responsibility for each category, and then include a short profile highlighting each person's skills.

The primary business categories of sales, marketing , administration, and production usually work for many small businesses. If your business has employees, you will also need a human resources section. You may also find that your company needs additional management categories to fit your unique circumstances.

It's not necessary to have a different person in charge of each category; some key management people often fill more than one role. Identify the key managers in your business and explain what functions and experience each team member will serve. You may wish to present this as an organizational chart in your business plan, although the list format is also appropriate.

Along with this section, you should include the complete resumés of each management team member (including your own). Follow this with an explanation of how each member will be compensated and their benefits package, and describe any profit-sharing plans that may apply.

If there are any contracts that relate directly to your management team members, such as work contracts or non-competition agreements, you should include them in an Appendix to your business plan.

While external management resources are often overlooked when writing a business plan , using these resources effectively can make the difference between the success or failure of your managers. Think of these external resources as your internal management team's backup. They give your business credibility and an additional pool of expertise.

Advisory Board

An Advisory Board can increase consumer and investor confidence, attract talented employees by showing a commitment to company growth and bring a diversity of contributions. If you choose to have an Advisory Board , list all the board members in this section, and include a bio and all relevant specializations. If you choose your board members carefully, the group can compensate for the niche forms of expertise that your internal managers lack.

When selecting your board members, look for people who are genuinely interested in seeing your business do well and have the patience and time to provide sound advice.

Recently retired executives or managers, other successful entrepreneurs, and/or vendors would be good choices for an Advisory Board.

Professional Services

Professional Services should also be highlighted in the external management resources section. Describe all the external professional advisors that your business will use, such as accountants, bankers, lawyers, IT consultants, business consultants, and/or business coaches. These professionals provide a web of advice and support outside your internal management team that can be invaluable in making management decisions and your new business a success .

The last point you should address in the management section of your business plan is your human resources needs. The trick to writing about human resources is to be specific. To simply write, "We'll need more people once we get up and running," isn't sufficient. Follow this list:

• Detail how many employees your business will need at each stage and what they will cost.
• Describe exactly how your business's human resources needs can be met. Will it be best to have employees, or should you operate with contract workers or freelancers ? Do you need full-time or part-time staff or a mix of both?
• Outline your staffing requirements, including a description of the specific skills that the people working for you will need to possess.
• Calculate your labor costs. Decide the number of employees you will need and how many customers each employee can serve. For example, if it takes one employee to serve 150 customers, and you forecast 1,500 customers in your first year, your business will need 10 employees.
• Determine how much each employee will receive and total the salary cost for all your employees.
• Add to this the cost of  Workers' Compensation Insurance  (mandatory for most businesses) and the cost of any other employee benefits, such as company-sponsored medical and dental plans.

After you've listed the points above, describe how you will find the staff your business needs and how you will train them. Your description of staff recruitment should explain whether or not sufficient local labor is available and how you will recruit staff.

When you're writing about staff training, you'll want to include as many specifics as possible. What specific training will your staff undergo? What ongoing training opportunities will you provide your employees?

Even if the plan for your business is to start as a sole proprietorship, you should include a section on potential human resources demands as a way to demonstrate that you've thought about the staffing your business may require as it grows.

Business plans are about the future and the hypothetical challenges and successes that await. It's worth visualizing and documenting the details of your business so that the materials and network around your dream can begin to take shape.

What is the management section of a business plan?

The 'management section' describes your management team, staff, resources, and how your business ownership is structured.

What are the 5 sections of a business plan?

A business plan provides a road map showing your company's goals and how you'll achieve them. The five sections of a business plan are as follows:

• The  market analysis  outlines the demand for your product or service.
• The  competitive analysis  section shows your competition's strengths and weaknesses and your strategy for gaining market share.
• The management plan outlines your ownership structure, the management team, and staffing requirements.
• The  operating plan  details your business location and the facilities, equipment, and supplies needed to operate.
• The  financial plan  shows the map to financial success and the sources of funding, such as bank loans or investors.

SCORE. " Why Small Businesses Should Consider Workers’ Comp Insurance ."

How to Write a Business Plan: Step-by-Step Guide + Examples

Noah Parsons

24 min. read

Updated May 7, 2024

Writing a business plan doesn’t have to be complicated. 

In this step-by-step guide, you’ll learn how to write a business plan that’s detailed enough to impress bankers and potential investors, while giving you the tools to start, run, and grow a successful business.

• The basics of business planning

If you’re reading this guide, then you already know why you need a business plan . 

You understand that planning helps you: 

• Raise money
• Grow strategically
• Keep your business on the right track 

As you start to write your plan, it’s useful to zoom out and remember what a business plan is .

At its core, a business plan is an overview of the products and services you sell, and the customers that you sell to. It explains your business strategy: how you’re going to build and grow your business, what your marketing strategy is, and who your competitors are.

Most business plans also include financial forecasts for the future. These set sales goals, budget for expenses, and predict profits and cash flow. 

A good business plan is much more than just a document that you write once and forget about. It’s also a guide that helps you outline and achieve your goals. 

After completing your plan, you can use it as a management tool to track your progress toward your goals. Updating and adjusting your forecasts and budgets as you go is one of the most important steps you can take to run a healthier, smarter business. 

We’ll dive into how to use your plan later in this article.

There are many different types of plans , but we’ll go over the most common type here, which includes everything you need for an investor-ready plan. However, if you’re just starting out and are looking for something simpler—I recommend starting with a one-page business plan . It’s faster and easier to create. 

It’s also the perfect place to start if you’re just figuring out your idea, or need a simple strategic plan to use inside your business.

Dig deeper : How to write a one-page business plan

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• What to include in your business plan

Executive summary

The executive summary is an overview of your business and your plans. It comes first in your plan and is ideally just one to two pages. Most people write it last because it’s a summary of the complete business plan.

Ideally, the executive summary can act as a stand-alone document that covers the highlights of your detailed plan. 

In fact, it’s common for investors to ask only for the executive summary when evaluating your business. If they like what they see in the executive summary, they’ll often follow up with a request for a complete plan, a pitch presentation , or more in-depth financial forecasts .

Your executive summary should include:

• A summary of the problem you are solving
• A description of your product or service
• An overview of your target market
• A brief description of your team
• A summary of your financials
• Your funding requirements (if you are raising money)

Dig Deeper: How to write an effective executive summary

Products and services description

This is where you describe exactly what you’re selling, and how it solves a problem for your target market. The best way to organize this part of your plan is to start by describing the problem that exists for your customers. After that, you can describe how you plan to solve that problem with your product or service. 

This is usually called a problem and solution statement .

To truly showcase the value of your products and services, you need to craft a compelling narrative around your offerings. How will your product or service transform your customers’ lives or jobs? A strong narrative will draw in your readers.

This is also the part of the business plan to discuss any competitive advantages you may have, like specific intellectual property or patents that protect your product. If you have any initial sales, contracts, or other evidence that your product or service is likely to sell, include that information as well. It will show that your idea has traction , which can help convince readers that your plan has a high chance of success.

Market analysis

Your target market is a description of the type of people that you plan to sell to. You might even have multiple target markets, depending on your business. 

A market analysis is the part of your plan where you bring together all of the information you know about your target market. Basically, it’s a thorough description of who your customers are and why they need what you’re selling. You’ll also include information about the growth of your market and your industry .

Try to be as specific as possible when you describe your market. 

Include information such as age, income level, and location—these are what’s called “demographics.” If you can, also describe your market’s interests and habits as they relate to your business—these are “psychographics.” 

Related: Target market examples

Essentially, you want to include any knowledge you have about your customers that is relevant to how your product or service is right for them. With a solid target market, it will be easier to create a sales and marketing plan that will reach your customers. That’s because you know who they are, what they like to do, and the best ways to reach them.

Next, provide any additional information you have about your market. 

What is the size of your market ? Is the market growing or shrinking? Ideally, you’ll want to demonstrate that your market is growing over time, and also explain how your business is positioned to take advantage of any expected changes in your industry.

Dig Deeper: Learn how to write a market analysis

Competitive analysis

Part of defining your business opportunity is determining what your competitive advantage is. To do this effectively, you need to know as much about your competitors as your target customers. 

Every business has some form of competition. If you don’t think you have competitors, then explore what alternatives there are in the market for your product or service. 

For example: In the early years of cars, their main competition was horses. For social media, the early competition was reading books, watching TV, and talking on the phone.

A good competitive analysis fully lays out the competitive landscape and then explains how your business is different. Maybe your products are better made, or cheaper, or your customer service is superior. Maybe your competitive advantage is your location – a wide variety of factors can ultimately give you an advantage.

Dig Deeper: How to write a competitive analysis for your business plan

Marketing and sales plan

The marketing and sales plan covers how you will position your product or service in the market, the marketing channels and messaging you will use, and your sales tactics. 

The best place to start with a marketing plan is with a positioning statement . 

This explains how your business fits into the overall market, and how you will explain the advantages of your product or service to customers. You’ll use the information from your competitive analysis to help you with your positioning. 

For example: You might position your company as the premium, most expensive but the highest quality option in the market. Or your positioning might focus on being locally owned and that shoppers support the local economy by buying your products.

Once you understand your positioning, you’ll bring this together with the information about your target market to create your marketing strategy . 

This is how you plan to communicate your message to potential customers. Depending on who your customers are and how they purchase products like yours, you might use many different strategies, from social media advertising to creating a podcast. Your marketing plan is all about how your customers discover who you are and why they should consider your products and services. 

While your marketing plan is about reaching your customers—your sales plan will describe the actual sales process once a customer has decided that they’re interested in what you have to offer. 

If your business requires salespeople and a long sales process, describe that in this section. If your customers can “self-serve” and just make purchases quickly on your website, describe that process. 

A good sales plan picks up where your marketing plan leaves off. The marketing plan brings customers in the door and the sales plan is how you close the deal.

Together, these specific plans paint a picture of how you will connect with your target audience, and how you will turn them into paying customers.

Dig deeper: What to include in your sales and marketing plan

Business operations

The operations section describes the necessary requirements for your business to run smoothly. It’s where you talk about how your business works and what day-to-day operations look like. 

Depending on how your business is structured, your operations plan may include elements of the business like:

• Supply chain management
• Manufacturing processes
• Equipment and technology
• Distribution

Some businesses distribute their products and reach their customers through large retailers like Amazon.com, Walmart, Target, and grocery store chains. 

These businesses should review how this part of their business works. The plan should discuss the logistics and costs of getting products onto store shelves and any potential hurdles the business may have to overcome.

If your business is much simpler than this, that’s OK. This section of your business plan can be either extremely short or more detailed, depending on the type of business you are building.

For businesses selling services, such as physical therapy or online software, you can use this section to describe the technology you’ll leverage, what goes into your service, and who you will partner with to deliver your services.

Dig Deeper: Learn how to write the operations chapter of your plan

Key milestones and metrics

Although it’s not required to complete your business plan, mapping out key business milestones and the metrics can be incredibly useful for measuring your success.

Good milestones clearly lay out the parameters of the task and set expectations for their execution. You’ll want to include:

• A description of each task
• The proposed due date
• Who is responsible for each task

If you have a budget, you can include projected costs to hit each milestone. You don’t need extensive project planning in this section—just list key milestones you want to hit and when you plan to hit them. This is your overall business roadmap. 

Possible milestones might be:

• Website launch date
• Store or office opening date
• First significant sales
• Break even date
• Business licenses and approvals

You should also discuss the key numbers you will track to determine your success. Some common metrics worth tracking include:

• Conversion rates
• Customer acquisition costs
• Profit per customer
• Repeat purchases

It’s perfectly fine to start with just a few metrics and grow the number you are tracking over time. You also may find that some metrics simply aren’t relevant to your business and can narrow down what you’re tracking.

Dig Deeper: How to use milestones in your business plan

Organization and management team

Investors don’t just look for great ideas—they want to find great teams. Use this chapter to describe your current team and who you need to hire . You should also provide a quick overview of your location and history if you’re already up and running.

Briefly highlight the relevant experiences of each key team member in the company. It’s important to make the case for why yours is the right team to turn an idea into a reality. 

Do they have the right industry experience and background? Have members of the team had entrepreneurial successes before? 

If you still need to hire key team members, that’s OK. Just note those gaps in this section.

Your company overview should also include a summary of your company’s current business structure . The most common business structures include:

• Sole proprietor
• Partnership

Be sure to provide an overview of how the business is owned as well. Does each business partner own an equal portion of the business? How is ownership divided? 

Potential lenders and investors will want to know the structure of the business before they will consider a loan or investment.

Dig Deeper: How to write about your company structure and team

Financial plan

Last, but certainly not least, is your financial plan chapter. 

Entrepreneurs often find this section the most daunting. But, business financials for most startups are less complicated than you think, and a business degree is certainly not required to build a solid financial forecast. 

A typical financial forecast in a business plan includes the following:

• Sales forecast : An estimate of the sales expected over a given period. You’ll break down your forecast into the key revenue streams that you expect to have.
• Expense budget : Your planned spending such as personnel costs , marketing expenses, and taxes.
• Profit & Loss : Brings together your sales and expenses and helps you calculate planned profits.
• Cash Flow : Shows how cash moves into and out of your business. It can predict how much cash you’ll have on hand at any given point in the future.
• Balance Sheet : A list of the assets, liabilities, and equity in your company. In short, it provides an overview of the financial health of your business. 

A strong business plan will include a description of assumptions about the future, and potential risks that could impact the financial plan. Including those will be especially important if you’re writing a business plan to pursue a loan or other investment.

Dig Deeper: How to create financial forecasts and budgets

This is the place for additional data, charts, or other information that supports your plan.

Including an appendix can significantly enhance the credibility of your plan by showing readers that you’ve thoroughly considered the details of your business idea, and are backing your ideas up with solid data.

Just remember that the information in the appendix is meant to be supplementary. Your business plan should stand on its own, even if the reader skips this section.

Dig Deeper : What to include in your business plan appendix

Optional: Business plan cover page

Adding a business plan cover page can make your plan, and by extension your business, seem more professional in the eyes of potential investors, lenders, and partners. It serves as the introduction to your document and provides necessary contact information for stakeholders to reference.

Your cover page should be simple and include:

• Company logo
• Business name
• Value proposition (optional)
• Business plan title
• Completion and/or update date
• Address and contact information
• Confidentiality statement

Just remember, the cover page is optional. If you decide to include it, keep it very simple and only spend a short amount of time putting it together.

Dig Deeper: How to create a business plan cover page

How to use AI to help write your business plan

Generative AI tools such as ChatGPT can speed up the business plan writing process and help you think through concepts like market segmentation and competition. These tools are especially useful for taking ideas that you provide and converting them into polished text for your business plan.

The best way to use AI for your business plan is to leverage it as a collaborator , not a replacement for human creative thinking and ingenuity. 

AI can come up with lots of ideas and act as a brainstorming partner. It’s up to you to filter through those ideas and figure out which ones are realistic enough to resonate with your customers. 

There are pros and cons of using AI to help with your business plan . So, spend some time understanding how it can be most helpful before just outsourcing the job to AI.

Learn more: 10 AI prompts you need to write a business plan

• Writing tips and strategies

To help streamline the business plan writing process, here are a few tips and key questions to answer to make sure you get the most out of your plan and avoid common mistakes .  

Determine why you are writing a business plan

Knowing why you are writing a business plan will determine your approach to your planning project. 

For example: If you are writing a business plan for yourself, or just to use inside your own business , you can probably skip the section about your team and organizational structure. 

If you’re raising money, you’ll want to spend more time explaining why you’re looking to raise the funds and exactly how you will use them.

Regardless of how you intend to use your business plan , think about why you are writing and what you’re trying to get out of the process before you begin.

Keep things concise

Probably the most important tip is to keep your business plan short and simple. There are no prizes for long business plans . The longer your plan is, the less likely people are to read it. 

So focus on trimming things down to the essentials your readers need to know. Skip the extended, wordy descriptions and instead focus on creating a plan that is easy to read —using bullets and short sentences whenever possible.

Have someone review your business plan

Writing a business plan in a vacuum is never a good idea. Sometimes it’s helpful to zoom out and check if your plan makes sense to someone else. You also want to make sure that it’s easy to read and understand.

Don’t wait until your plan is “done” to get a second look. Start sharing your plan early, and find out from readers what questions your plan leaves unanswered. This early review cycle will help you spot shortcomings in your plan and address them quickly, rather than finding out about them right before you present your plan to a lender or investor.

If you need a more detailed review, you may want to explore hiring a professional plan writer to thoroughly examine it.

Use a free business plan template and business plan examples to get started

Knowing what information to include in a business plan is sometimes not quite enough. If you’re struggling to get started or need additional guidance, it may be worth using a business plan template. 

There are plenty of great options available (we’ve rounded up our 8 favorites to streamline your search).

But, if you’re looking for a free downloadable business plan template , you can get one right now; download the template used by more than 1 million businesses. 

Or, if you just want to see what a completed business plan looks like, check out our library of over 550 free business plan examples . 

We even have a growing list of industry business planning guides with tips for what to focus on depending on your business type.

Common pitfalls and how to avoid them

It’s easy to make mistakes when you’re writing your business plan. Some entrepreneurs get sucked into the writing and research process, and don’t focus enough on actually getting their business started. 

Here are a few common mistakes and how to avoid them:

Not talking to your customers : This is one of the most common mistakes. It’s easy to assume that your product or service is something that people want. Before you invest too much in your business and too much in the planning process, make sure you talk to your prospective customers and have a good understanding of their needs.

• Overly optimistic sales and profit forecasts: By nature, entrepreneurs are optimistic about the future. But it’s good to temper that optimism a little when you’re planning, and make sure your forecasts are grounded in reality. 
• Spending too much time planning: Yes, planning is crucial. But you also need to get out and talk to customers, build prototypes of your product and figure out if there’s a market for your idea. Make sure to balance planning with building.
• Not revising the plan: Planning is useful, but nothing ever goes exactly as planned. As you learn more about what’s working and what’s not—revise your plan, your budgets, and your revenue forecast. Doing so will provide a more realistic picture of where your business is going, and what your financial needs will be moving forward.
• Not using the plan to manage your business: A good business plan is a management tool. Don’t just write it and put it on the shelf to collect dust – use it to track your progress and help you reach your goals.
• Presenting your business plan

The planning process forces you to think through every aspect of your business and answer questions that you may not have thought of. That’s the real benefit of writing a business plan – the knowledge you gain about your business that you may not have been able to discover otherwise.

With all of this knowledge, you’re well prepared to convert your business plan into a pitch presentation to present your ideas. 

A pitch presentation is a summary of your plan, just hitting the highlights and key points. It’s the best way to present your business plan to investors and team members.

Dig Deeper: Learn what key slides should be included in your pitch deck

Use your business plan to manage your business

One of the biggest benefits of planning is that it gives you a tool to manage your business better. With a revenue forecast, expense budget, and projected cash flow, you know your targets and where you are headed.

And yet, nothing ever goes exactly as planned – it’s the nature of business.

That’s where using your plan as a management tool comes in. The key to leveraging it for your business is to review it periodically and compare your forecasts and projections to your actual results.

Start by setting up a regular time to review the plan – a monthly review is a good starting point. During this review, answer questions like:

• Did you meet your sales goals?
• Is spending following your budget?
• Has anything gone differently than what you expected?

Now that you see whether you’re meeting your goals or are off track, you can make adjustments and set new targets. 

Maybe you’re exceeding your sales goals and should set new, more aggressive goals. In that case, maybe you should also explore more spending or hiring more employees. 

Or maybe expenses are rising faster than you projected. If that’s the case, you would need to look at where you can cut costs.

A plan, and a method for comparing your plan to your actual results , is the tool you need to steer your business toward success.

Learn More: How to run a regular plan review

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How to write a business plan FAQ

What is a business plan?

A document that describes your business , the products and services you sell, and the customers that you sell to. It explains your business strategy, how you’re going to build and grow your business, what your marketing strategy is, and who your competitors are.

What are the benefits of a business plan?

A business plan helps you understand where you want to go with your business and what it will take to get there. It reduces your overall risk, helps you uncover your business’s potential, attracts investors, and identifies areas for growth.

Having a business plan ultimately makes you more confident as a business owner and more likely to succeed for a longer period of time.

What are the 7 steps of a business plan?

The seven steps to writing a business plan include:

• Write a brief executive summary
• Describe your products and services.
• Conduct market research and compile data into a cohesive market analysis.
• Describe your marketing and sales strategy.
• Outline your organizational structure and management team.
• Develop financial projections for sales, revenue, and cash flow.
• Add any additional documents to your appendix.

What are the 5 most common business plan mistakes?

There are plenty of mistakes that can be made when writing a business plan. However, these are the 5 most common that you should do your best to avoid:

• 1. Not taking the planning process seriously.
• Having unrealistic financial projections or incomplete financial information.
• Inconsistent information or simple mistakes.
• Failing to establish a sound business model.
• Not having a defined purpose for your business plan.

What questions should be answered in a business plan?

Writing a business plan is all about asking yourself questions about your business and being able to answer them through the planning process. You’ll likely be asking dozens and dozens of questions for each section of your plan.

However, these are the key questions you should ask and answer with your business plan:

• How will your business make money?
• Is there a need for your product or service?
• Who are your customers?
• How are you different from the competition?
• How will you reach your customers?
• How will you measure success?

How long should a business plan be?

The length of your business plan fully depends on what you intend to do with it. From the SBA and traditional lender point of view, a business plan needs to be whatever length necessary to fully explain your business. This means that you prove the viability of your business, show that you understand the market, and have a detailed strategy in place.

If you intend to use your business plan for internal management purposes, you don’t necessarily need a full 25-50 page business plan. Instead, you can start with a one-page plan to get all of the necessary information in place.

What are the different types of business plans?

While all business plans cover similar categories, the style and function fully depend on how you intend to use your plan. Here are a few common business plan types worth considering.

Traditional business plan: The tried-and-true traditional business plan is a formal document meant to be used when applying for funding or pitching to investors. This type of business plan follows the outline above and can be anywhere from 10-50 pages depending on the amount of detail included, the complexity of your business, and what you include in your appendix.

Business model canvas: The business model canvas is a one-page template designed to demystify the business planning process. It removes the need for a traditional, copy-heavy business plan, in favor of a single-page outline that can help you and outside parties better explore your business idea.

One-page business plan: This format is a simplified version of the traditional plan that focuses on the core aspects of your business. You’ll typically stick with bullet points and single sentences. It’s most useful for those exploring ideas, needing to validate their business model, or who need an internal plan to help them run and manage their business.

Lean Plan: The Lean Plan is less of a specific document type and more of a methodology. It takes the simplicity and styling of the one-page business plan and turns it into a process for you to continuously plan, test, review, refine, and take action based on performance. It’s faster, keeps your plan concise, and ensures that your plan is always up-to-date.

What’s the difference between a business plan and a strategic plan?

A business plan covers the “who” and “what” of your business. It explains what your business is doing right now and how it functions. The strategic plan explores long-term goals and explains “how” the business will get there. It encourages you to look more intently toward the future and how you will achieve your vision.

However, when approached correctly, your business plan can actually function as a strategic plan as well. If kept lean, you can define your business, outline strategic steps, and track ongoing operations all with a single plan.

See why 1.2 million entrepreneurs have written their business plans with LivePlan

Noah is the COO at Palo Alto Software, makers of the online business plan app LivePlan. He started his career at Yahoo! and then helped start the user review site Epinions.com. From there he started a software distribution business in the UK before coming to Palo Alto Software to run the marketing and product teams.

Table of Contents

• Use AI to help write your plan
• Common planning mistakes
• Manage with your business plan
• Templates and examples

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How to build an organizational development plan: a comprehensive guide (+template), share this article.

Discover the power of strategic organizational development with our comprehensive plan and access a comprehensive template. Learn how to assess your company's current state, set strategic objectives, and create targeted action plans for growth.

Trying to keep up with the constant changes in the market sometimes feels like you’re a tortoise in a race full of hares. But the tortoise won the race in the end, and by taking the time for proper planning and organization, your organization can too.

Organizational development, or OD, is a process of planned change that seeks to increase the effectiveness and efficiency of an organization. An organizational development plan (ODP) is a comprehensive document that outlines how an organization will go about achieving its goals and objectives. 

It includes strategies for improving overall performance, developing employee skills, increasing customer satisfaction, and more. The ODP allows companies to identify their current strengths and weaknesses to create meaningful plans for improvement. 

By having a clearly-defined plan in place, organizations measure progress over time and make necessary adjustments as needed. An effective OD plan makes an organization more efficient, productive, competitive, and profitable. 

The benefits of implementing an organizational development plan include: 

• Improved employee morale
• Increased collaboration among staff
• Reductions in costs associated with reorganizations or restructurings
• Enhanced customer service levels
• Higher levels of productivity
• Improved communication among staff and management
• More efficient use of resources

Skip ahead:

Assessing Organizational Needs and Readiness

Defining organizational development goals and objectives, identifying key focus areas for improvement, action planning and implementation, monitoring and evaluation, sustaining organizational development, organizational development plan template, case studies and success stories, frequently asked questions.

The first step in crafting an ODP is conducting a thorough organizational analysis. This process involves examining the organization’s current state, including operational effectiveness, efficiency, customer satisfaction, employee engagement, and other relevant areas. Gaining a clear understanding of what requires improvement allows the organization to prioritize its efforts accordingly.

Consideration of External Factors

In addition to assessing internal aspects of the organization, it’s crucial to consider external factors that may impact performance – such as economic conditions or industry trends. By taking these outside influences into account when developing plans for growth and competitiveness can help ensure success.

SWOT Analysis

After completing a comprehensive analysis, organizations should use these findings to conduct a SWOT analysis – identifying strengths and weaknesses along with any opportunities or threats present. This information helps create strategies for capitalizing on strengths while minimizing or mitigating weaknesses as well as recognizing potential new revenue sources or competitive advantages.

Developing an Effective ODP

An effective ODP should include concrete steps addressing issues identified through the assessment process (organizational analysis and SWOT). It’s essential to take both internal factors (e.g., company culture, employee morale) and external forces (e.g., competition in the marketplace) into consideration during plan development so that adjustments can be made accordingly for maximum effectiveness.

The second step in crafting an ODP involves defining the organization’s goals and objectives, which will inform decisions about strategy implementation, resource allocation, and progress measurement. It is crucial to establish measurable, clear goals that align with the organization’s values and mission statement for easy progress tracking over time.

SMART Objectives

Once the overall goals are set, organizations should formulate SMART objectives – Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-bound targets. These criteria ensure that achievable targets are established while enabling organizations to evaluate their progress with tangible results. Moreover, these objectives should align with broader organizational goals to guarantee advancement towards larger ambitions.

Aligning Goals with Vision and Mission

Organizations must also ensure that their defined goals and objectives resonate with their vision and mission statements. This alignment allows organizations to optimize resource utilization in achieving overarching aspirations effectively.

Enhancing Decision-Making through Clarity

A comprehensive understanding of an organization’s desired direction facilitates improved decision-making when implementing strategies for growth or improvement. Setting clear organizational development goals aligned with a company’s vision and mission statement, along with well-defined SMART objectives, will enable organizations to navigate successfully throughout the entire process.

The third step in crafting an ODP involves pinpointing key areas for improvement based on the organization’s overall goals and objectives. Both short-term and long-term objectives should be considered when determining focus areas. Involving employees in this process can yield valuable insights into the current state of the organization and potential improvement points.

Developing Targeted Strategies 

After identifying focus areas, organizations can start formulating strategies and initiatives tailored to their specific needs, taking into account existing capabilities and resources. These strategies must be realistic and achievable to ensure success, with employee participation providing valuable input on potential solutions.

Allocating Resources Effectively

Organizations need to determine resource allocation – both financial and human – for each initiative while considering associated costs to maximize efficiency in resource use. Additionally, it is essential to provide adequate training and support for employees involved in implementing these strategies.

Establishing Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

Lastly, setting up KPIs helps measure the success of implemented strategies over time, allowing organizations to track progress or make necessary adjustments as needed. Common KPIs include customer satisfaction, employee engagement, productivity, and profitability.

An effective ODP should consist of actionable steps to achieve desired outcomes. Break down large strategies into smaller tasks with specific timelines to keep the plan on track and ensure everyone is aware of their responsibilities. Establishing milestones also helps teams stay motivated and measure success over time.

Assigning Roles and Deadlines

Once the plan is broken down into manageable tasks, assign specific responsibilities and deadlines for each step. This approach ensures team members understand their roles in achieving desired outcomes while maintaining motivation through clear expectations.

Communication and Change Management Plans

Develop communication plans to keep all stakeholders informed about progress, allowing team members to voice opinions or suggest changes if needed. A concise communication plan promotes seamless organizational change implementation by ensuring everyone remains aligned at all times.

Risk Mitigation through Change Management

A well-defined change management plan enables teams to identify potential risks early in the process so they can be addressed proactively before becoming issues that could hinder progress.

Building Support among Stakeholders

Engage both internal (employees) and external (customers, suppliers, partners ) stakeholders throughout the planning process for widespread support of your ODP’s goals—this builds a sense of ownership that sustains motivation across all parties involved.

A crucial aspect of a successful ODP is setting measurable, specific, realistic, achievable, and timely goals that align with the organization’s values and mission statement. These metrics serve as benchmarks for measuring progress over time.

Tracking Progress and Milestones

Track progress by regularly assessing the organization’s current state against the ODP’s goals and objectives – enabling the identification of improvement areas or potential roadblocks. Monitoring also allows leadership to acknowledge successes while motivating employees toward further achievements.

Conducting Regular Reviews 

Perform regular reviews to examine organizational performance against established metrics, analyze successes and failures, and identify improvement areas or new growth opportunities – all while making necessary adjustments accordingly.

Maintaining Flexibility in ODPs 

Organizational development plans should remain adaptable based on evolving needs. If progress isn’t being made toward set objectives within the ODP framework, consider changes such as altering processes and procedures, adding staff members, or implementing new technologies.

For organizational development to have a lasting impact, it’s crucial to seamlessly integrate the plan into every aspect of company culture. Begin by clearly communicating the plan’s objectives and strategies to employees, ensuring they understand how their roles contribute to achieving these goals. 

Encourage open dialogue about why specific changes are necessary for both individual growth and overall success. By fostering a transparent environment, you’ll cultivate employee buy-in and facilitate smoother transitions throughout your organization.

Empowering Employees with Resources

Support your team by offering diverse resources tailored to their needs, like customized training programs , engaging workshops, insightful seminars, mentorship opportunities, or access to online learning platforms. 

Providing these tools ensures everyone stays aligned with your vision while knowing what they need to do for collective triumph. Empowering employees with resources helps them feel valued and nurtures personal growth that benefits the organization as a whole.

Cultivating a Learning Environment

Embrace a culture that prioritizes continuous learning and improvement at all levels within your organization. By regularly assessing processes and investing in employee skill development through targeted training initiatives or knowledge-sharing sessions, you’ll stay agile in today’s rapidly evolving business landscape. An ongoing commitment to nurturing talent will not only help attract top candidates but also retain existing talent eager for professional growth.

Acknowledging Accomplishments

It’s essential not just to celebrate major milestones but also to recognize small wins along the way; these acknowledgments fuel motivation, boost morale, and strengthen unity within an organization. In team settings where collaboration is key, recognizing personal contributions fosters camaraderie across all levels while encouraging further cooperation among coworkers.

Sharing success stories internally via newsletters or social media channels can inspire others on how their efforts play an essential role in achieving common goals – ultimately creating a positive feedback loop that benefits everyone involved.

Adapting Through Feedback Loops

Establish feedback loops to fine-tune your organizational development plans (ODP) effectively. These can involve employee surveys, one-on-one meetings, or regular team debriefs where employees openly discuss progress made and any challenges encountered. This regular input from employees helps identify areas needing improvement while adjusting ODPs accordingly.

To get started implementing your plan quickly, try this handy organizational development plan template .

This organizational development plan template provides a comprehensive structure for planning and implementing your organization’s development initiatives. You can customize the template to suit your organization’s specific needs and objectives.

The template also comes with charts for the ten organizational development plan frameworks.

These fillable templates can help you apply each of the ten organizational development frameworks to your organization. Customize them to suit your organization’s specific needs and objectives.

Organizational development plans can be implemented across many different industries. 

Marriott International, a prominent player in the hospitality industry, implemented an organizational development plan (ODP) aimed at enhancing customer satisfaction and loyalty. Leveraging data analytics to pinpoint areas needing improvement, they devised targeted strategies that led to significant growth in customer ratings and an 8% increase in overall profits.

Enhancing Patient Experience in Healthcare

In healthcare, Kaiser Permanente created an ODP encompassing process improvements and employee training initiatives to elevate patient satisfaction levels. This comprehensive strategy resulted in their patient experience scores soaring from an already impressive 84% satisfaction rate to a remarkable 94%.

Streamlining Manufacturing Processes

Toyota’s manufacturing sector adopted an ODP focused on augmenting quality, efficiency, and safety. Consequently, the company reduced production costs by 10% while simultaneously increasing customer satisfaction levels by 7%.

The Key to Successful Organizational Development Plans

These success stories illustrate how effective ODPs can benefit organizations across various industries. A well-crafted plan enables companies to monitor progress over time and make necessary adjustments as required.

For optimal results, it’s crucial for ODPs to be tailored specifically for each organization – identifying areas needing improvement while addressing potential obstacles that may hinder growth. Managers play a pivotal role here, ensuring employees comprehend the plan’s objectives and their individual roles within its execution.

Regularly measuring progress allows businesses to stay current with industry trends or internal changes within their organization and make adjustments or updates when needed accordingly.

Finally, communication is essential to keep all stakeholders informed of ongoing progress and fosters transparency while maintaining motivation toward achieving shared goals. 

Organizational development plans are a valuable tool for any type of organization. By creating an ODP, organizations can identify their current strengths and weaknesses to create meaningful plans for improvement. 

An effective OD plan should be tailored to an organization’s needs and goals, measure progress over time, communicate results regularly with all stakeholders involved, and make necessary adjustments or changes if needed. 

With careful planning and implementation, an organizational development plan increases performance, develops employee skills, increases customer satisfaction levels, reduces production costs, improves safety standards, and much more.

Download the Organizational Development Plan Framework: Propel Your Company’s Growth

Drive the growth and success of your organization with our comprehensive Organizational Development Plan Framework. This essential resource provides a structured approach to strategically enhance your company’s capabilities and maximize its potential.

Q. What is an organizational development plan? 

An organizational development plan (ODP) is a comprehensive document that outlines how an organization will achieve its goals and objectives. It includes strategies for improving overall performance, developing employee skills, increasing customer satisfaction, and more. 

Q. Why is an organizational development plan important for businesses? 

An organizational development plan improves performance and gets organizations closer to their goals. It provides a roadmap for the organization to follow to achieve success. 

The ODP outlines specific strategies to implement, such as training programs , process improvements, or changes in organizational culture. Having an effective plan will ensure that resources are allocated properly and progress is monitored over time.

Q. How do I assess the needs and readiness of my organization for development?

Assessing needs and readiness involves evaluating current performance, analyzing data on employee engagement and satisfaction, identifying areas where improvement is needed, and understanding the organization’s goals. 

It also requires looking at external factors that could affect your business such as changing customer demands or market trends. Once you have completed this assessment process, you will be better prepared to develop a comprehensive plan for achieving organizational success. 

Q. What are the key components of an effective organizational development strategy?

The key components of an effective organizational development strategy include: 

• Establishing a vision and mission statement
• Developing core values and objectives that align with the company’s vision and mission statement
• Identifying areas of improvement within the organization and developing plans to address them
• Implementing an effective communication plan
• Measuring progress against established benchmarks to determine success
• Evaluating and revising the ODP as needed based on feedback

Q. How do I implement an organizational development plan within my organization?

Implementing an ODP requires a comprehensive analysis of your current organizational structure and processes. This means assessing the strengths and weaknesses of your current system to identify areas for improvement. 

Once you have identified these areas, you can develop strategies for making improvements. These strategies should be tailored to your organization’s specific needs and goals and may include changes to policies, procedures, or even technology. 

Additionally, all stakeholders must be involved in the development process so that they understand why these changes are being made and how they will benefit them.

Q. How can I measure the effectiveness of an organizational development plan?

Organizational development plans should be evaluated regularly to determine if they are achieving their intended outcomes. Different metrics can be used depending on the type of plan, such as customer satisfaction surveys, employee engagement surveys, and performance reviews. Financial statements and other key performance indicators (KPIs) can give insight into an organization’s overall progress, too.

Q. Are there any templates available for creating an organizational development plan?

There are many templates available online that you can use to create an organizational development plan. These templates usually include sections for objectives, strategies, and action plans. They also offer guidance on what information to include in each section. This template is a fantastic resource for starting your ODP.

Q. Can you provide examples of organizations that have successfully implemented an organizational development plan?

Google has used an ODP to develop its internal structure and culture to create a more collaborative and innovative workplace. Similarly, Amazon has used OD plans to increase customer satisfaction by streamlining processes and creating better communication channels between employees and customers. Apple Inc. has also regularly utilized OD plans to update its product lines for maximum customer appeal and profitability.

Daniela Ochoa is the go-to Content Marketing Specialist here at Thinkific Plus! With years of experience in marketing and communications, she is passionate about helping businesses grow through strategic storytelling, innovative digital campaigns, and online learning at scale.On this blog, she shares her expertise in content marketing, lead generation, and more.

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Organizational plans: a quick primer (with examples)

Strategic planning.

Updated: September 29, 2023 |

Jake Ballinger is an experienced SEO and content manager with deep expertise in FP&A and finance topics. He speaks 9 languages and lives in NYC.

Every finance team needs a strong plan.

But organizational plans cover some broad territory. 

Strategic? Tactical? Contingency?

We're going to clear all that up (or give you a refresher) in this blog post.

But for now:

An organizational plan is where financial forecasts and budgets meet project management and goal-setting.

Let's get into the specifics. 

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What are organizational plans?

Organizational planning is strategizing and preparing for a business's future successes.

One of the big organizational planning goals is to create strategic and tactical plans to guide the entire organization forward.

The plan can cover an organization's operations, marketing, financials, staffing, etc. Its purpose is to ensure departments collaborate to reach company goals.

Organizational planning allows businesses to anticipate market fluctuations and weather economic change without suffering losses.

A clear roadmap of where the company wants to go better helps to focus its efforts on reaching desired outcomes.

What are the benefits of organizational planning?

If your company wants to grow, you need a game plan. This is the essence of an organizational plan.

Establishing and supporting organizational planning has many benefits beyond simply delivering on your company’s ambitions.

These are some of the ways the organizational planning process creates benefits for forward-thinking companies: 

Clear goals for the organization

Organizational planning helps define and set achievable targets for the organization and its teams.

It articulates the company's overall vision , provides a roadmap for how to get there, and creates measurable goals with time frames for achieving them. This built-in clarity gives teams clear and reasonable steps to align their efforts with the organization's larger objectives. 

Organizational planning also creates feedback loops to ensure that teams are making progress toward achieving their targets on schedule. This makes it easier to identify areas needing improvement or resources.

Organizations can ensure they are efficiently working towards their desired outcomes by setting clear goals.

Visibility into gaps or opportunities

Organizational planning breaks down data siloes and creates action plans, allowing the organization to identify areas of improvement or potential growth.

With this visibility, organizations can create better strategies and more clarity into the actions that lead to success.

Better employee morale and productivity

Well-informed and properly motivated employees have higher satisfaction and better retention rates than those without a clear roadmap to success.

Organizational planning allows every team member to see their role in the successful execution of plans and helps them stay engaged in the organization’s mission.

More resilience and agility

Organizational planning helps companies make quick decisions knowing that their goals will remain achievable through challenges.

Different types of organizational planning, such as financial planning, strategy implementation, and risk management, guide teams facing uncertainty or disruption. 

• Financial planning enables organizations to adjust their budgets according to changes in the market.
• Strategic implementation provides a practical roadmap for success.
• Risk management allows businesses to anticipate and mitigate risks before they become major problems. 

By using these different types of organizational planning, companies can adapt quickly to changing conditions and be better prepared for any eventuality.

Better cost savings and optimization

When you know what to do, you’re less likely to spend time and money trying things that may not work.

An organizational plan gives your teams a roadmap for conducting business, resulting in less waste and better outcomes.

This also translates to better profit margins due to the increased spending efficiency of a well-crafted budget and plans. 

Types of organizational planning

Organizational planning covers several different approaches aimed at different facets of the business.

Some organizational planning examples include strategic planning, driver-based planning, and tactical planning.

Each of the below types of planning plays a different role in helping the company, and its team members do what they set out to accomplish.

Strategic planning is a type of organizational planning focused on setting goals, developing strategies and tactics, and providing resources to get the job done.

It involves analyzing the organization's current situation or creating a vision for the future while considering factors such as external conditions, competitive landscape, customer needs and expectations, resource availability, and other internal considerations. 

Strategic plans are usually communicated in an organizational strategy document that outlines the key objectives and initiatives required to realize these objectives.

They create the larger framework and metrics for success. Teams then execute tactical plans to fulfill the requirements of the broader strategic approach.

Driver-based planning

Driver-based planning is a process of connecting financial plans to strategic and operational activities. It helps organizations to identify, prioritize and track the most critical actions to drive success. 

Driver-based planning incorporates financial goals and operational performance into the plan, allowing for comparing financial data with projected performance. It uses business drivers—core activities that produce results for the business—to build financial models and connect them to operational activities.

Using driver-based planning, organizations remain agile, adapt their plans based on changing conditions, and stay focused on results.

Tactical planning

If strategic planning provides the broad strokes of achieving your organization’s objectives, tactical add minor details.

Tactical planning involves identifying specific tasks and activities that must be done within a given timeframe to ensure overall strategic success. 

A tactical plan is created using information gathered during the strategic planning process and feedback from stakeholders , staff, and external advisors.

These plans are typically drawn up quarterly or yearly, including everything from budgeting to marketing strategies.

Operational planning

Operational plans are like user manuals for every area of your organization, from HR and hiring to financial planning and risk management. They help govern the day-to-day activities of your different business units.

Operational planning defines your organization’s goals and objectives and outlines the steps and procedures for achieving them.

It involves identifying specific tasks to be performed by each area of your business and setting out roles, responsibilities, timelines, and budgets. It's essential for successful organizational performance as it ensures that all processes are cohesive. 

Operational plans provide the framework for managing day-to-day operations while positioning your organization to meet longer-term goals.

A well-crafted operational plan will help keep your team focused and on track to achieve success. 

Contingency Planning

Life happens when you’re making other plans, which is also true of business life. Contingency planning aims to handle precisely those moments in your company’s journey. 

Contingency planning is a type of organizational planning used to prepare organizations for uncertain and unpredictable events.

It’s an important part of any organization's success, as it provides the flexibility and resilience needed to withstand and recover in an ever-changing business environment. 

Contingency planning focuses on preparing for potential risks and responding quickly when they occur, allowing the organization to make decisions confidently in the face of unexpected market changes.

The goal is to reduce disruption, mitigate losses, and ensure the continuity of operations.

Contingency plans typically include strategies for risk management, business continuity, disaster recovery, and crisis management.

Capacity Planning

Planning for future projects requires a keen view of the resources, people, and tools needed to achieve your goals. This is the goal of capacity planning .

It involves understanding the organization's current and future resources regarding personnel, infrastructure, technology, and other capabilities. 

Capacity planning also considers a range of potential scenarios to determine the optimal resource levels needed to handle them. This helps the organization proactively manage resources and avoid potential risks or disruptions.

By increasing its capacity ahead of time, the organization is better prepared to respond quickly and effectively when faced with unexpected events.

Workforce planning

Workforce development is a part of capacity planning, focusing on personnel and organizational structure.

It involves carefully monitoring and analyzing the organization's current and future employment requirements and skill sets. This helps identify talent, skills, or experience gaps that could be addressed through strategic recruitment or training initiatives.

Workforce planning also allows organizations to anticipate potential labor shortages or surpluses and adjust hiring plans to ensure optimal workforce utilization. 

A 5-steps organizational planning process

Every organizational plan addresses different needs but follows a repeatable pattern for success. Plan your next organizational strategy using the following steps:

1. Define your goals

Outlining your goals is essential to ensure you understand the challenge and have the resources and capabilities to solve it.

Allocate time for your team to discuss the most critical objectives and prioritize them accordingly.

Once your organization's main objectives are determined, you can start breaking down the tasks needed to achieve them into smaller, more manageable steps. 

2. Analyze your current process

Understanding your current organizational practices helps you decide on actions for future improvement.

Depending on the size of your organization and the complexity of its processes, conducting a thorough examination may require additional research and data analysis.

3. Seek stakeholder input

Soliciting input creates different perspectives on your processes and plan.

Through stakeholder contributions, you include valuable perspectives and identify resources.

It also better prepares teams to support the organization and its goals.

4. Develop a plan

Decide the specific, measurable actions departments will take to reach established goals. This includes: 

• Establishing deadlines
• Determining roles for key personnel
• Assigning tasks and activities 
• Setting project management milestones 
• Selecting and tracking key performance indicators (KPIs)

5. Measure results

Measuring and tracking KPIs lets you assess your progress and course correct where needed. KPIs provide a means of gauging the success or failure of specific actions. They can be used to inform and direct future strategies.

Organizations can make more informed decisions and stay ahead of challenges by establishing measurable goals and monitoring performance. Conclusion

Conclusion: your strategic plan and organizational plans

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How to make them, how they're categorized, and why you should have them.

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How to Write a Business Plan: Organization Structure

How to write a business plan: organizational structure, what is the organizational structure for a business plan.

The organization structure section should discuss whether your business will be a sole proprietor, limited liability corporation, or corporation, who will run your business, each person’s responsibility, and how your business will expand if needed.  There are numerous benefits to a detailed assessment of the company’s structure.  First, examining the structure of the business will help for tax purposes.  For example, limited liability and corporations are considered excellent for protecting shareholders concerning liabilities.  However, tax-wise, these firms often are double taxed.  The second benefit of a detailed assessment of a company’s structure is to understand how each owner will contribute to the company.  In other words, if there is more than one owner, what are their responsibilities, and how are these responsibilities to be carried out.

Why is the Organizational Structure important? 

There are numerous reasons why the organizational structure is essential for a business plan. In this section, the business owner will lay out how the company will be structured.  For example, this section will include job titles and responsibilities, resumes from owners and management, showing expertise in the industry, and supporting accolades for expertise.  Through discussing job responsibilities and experiences for management, readers will better understand why this type of business structure, and this management team, will be successful in the proposed business.

A second important reason for the organizational structure is that the section introduces business owners.  The owners and management team should not only be introduced in this section, but their experiences in the industry need to be highlighted and thoroughly explained.  In doing this, a sound foundation for management competence will be established.

A final reason for its importance is the job responsibility segment.  Ownership and management need to have a written document showing specific duties for each owner, if applicable, and specific job responsibilities for each position within the company.  By having this document, readers will see how the business will function and better understand the breakup of management responsibilities.

When to write the Organizational Structure?

The organizational structure should be written after the company description.   In the company description, readers will be introduced to the problem that the company is going to solve and how they propose to solve this problem.  This is usually the product or service offered.  The logical next step is to show a business structure that will allow the company to supply that product or service effectively and efficiently.  Thus the need for the organizational section follows immediately behind the company description.

How to write the Organizational Structure?

When I write my organizational structure for a business plan, for the most part, I start the first paragraph by reminding the readers of the company name.  From this, I then introduce how the company will be held in ownership.  For example, will the company be a limited liability corporation?  Sole proprietorship?  Next, I briefly introduce the management team and owners.  Further, I also briefly introduce their experience in the industry.

By following this structure, the first paragraph is an excellent summation of the section. This allows the reader to understand the breadth of the ownership structure without gaining significant details.

Organizational Structure:  Ownership

In the ownership section, I usually start writing the section by introducing the CEO/founder/majority owner.  In this portion, I usually write the segment, almost like a brief biography.  I will discuss the CEO's history in the industry and the reason why they feel that they are best suited to start and run the operation.

Once this is complete, I then follow the same structure with the other management team members and minority stakeholders.  When this is done, the reader should walk away with an excellent understanding of the qualifications of the ownership team and how their skills will complement each other.

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Organizational Structure:  Responsibilities

In the job responsibility section, I usually structure this portion as a bullet-pointed list.  At the top, I put the title such as CEO, project manager, or job title.  Following this, I list the responsibilities and expectations for each position.  Not only does this help show structure and foresight for the company.  But also, this will help management divvy up duties for the business.

Organizational Structure: Resume

The resume section is for senior managers and owners.  By including resumes, supporting documentation is available for claims made related to experience.  For example, if the CEO claims to have 20 years of experience in the industry, then the resume will show where this experience came from.  This adds credibility to previous claims made.

Organizational Structure: Compensation

Compensation is sometimes necessary to include in the organizational structure component.  Investors expect management to be compensated and employees as well.  However, excessive compensation is often an issue with startups and established businesses.  By showing reasonable compensation for each position, not only will a solid understanding of the pay for each position be shown, but restraint for compensation by the management team and ownership may be highlighted as well.

Organizational Structure: Achievements

This final section is almost like a cherry on top of the cake.  By this point, the reader should be well-versed in the experience and expertise of ownership and the management team.  Adding achievements highlights their expertise in their chosen industry.

Organizational Structure Example

Organizational structure.

Legal Structure

ABC Restaurant will be a limited liability corporation.

Management Summary

John Smith, Sr., MBA., is the founder and CEO of ABC Restaurant.  He has started and managed numerous successful small restaurants over the last ten years.  Restaurants started, and managed, including a breakfast cafe, food truck, and 24-hour diner.  For each business, he was responsible for all aspects of the organization, from marketing to strategic planning.

Job Responsibilities

• Create and execute marketing strategies for business growth.
• Align business strategies with the vision statement.
• Negotiating contracts with vendors.
• Ensure legal compliance for the business.
• Continually examine the firm’s external environment for new market opportunities.

General Manager:

• Control inventory to ensure optimal levels are attained.
• Manage day-to-day operations of the restaurant.
• Servers and cooks during high volume times.
• Interview and hire new employees.
• Assist in the onboarding process for new employees.
• Set up all workstations in the kitchen
• Prepare ingredients to use in cooked and non-cooked foods.
• Check food while cooking for appropriate temperatures.
• Ensure great presentation by dressing dishes as trained.
• Keep a sanitized and clean environment in the kitchen area.
• Stock dining area tables with needed items.
• Greet customers when they enter.
• Present dinner menus and help customers with food/beverages selections.
• Take and serve orders quickly and accurately.

Author: Paul Borosky, MBA., Doctoral Candidate, Published Author

Updated: 3/4/2022

How to make a business plan

Table of Contents

How to make a good business plan: step-by-step guide.

A business plan is a strategic roadmap used to navigate the challenging journey of entrepreneurship. It's the foundation upon which you build a successful business.

A well-crafted business plan can help you define your vision, clarify your goals, and identify potential problems before they arise.

But where do you start? How do you create a business plan that sets you up for success?

This article will explore the step-by-step process of creating a comprehensive business plan.

What is a business plan?

A business plan is a formal document that outlines a business's objectives, strategies, and operational procedures. It typically includes the following information about a company:

Products or services

Target market

Competitors

Marketing and sales strategies

Financial plan

Management team

A business plan serves as a roadmap for a company's success and provides a blueprint for its growth and development. It helps entrepreneurs and business owners organize their ideas, evaluate the feasibility, and identify potential challenges and opportunities.

As well as serving as a guide for business owners, a business plan can attract investors and secure funding. It demonstrates the company's understanding of the market, its ability to generate revenue and profits, and its strategy for managing risks and achieving success.

Business plan vs. business model canvas

A business plan may seem similar to a business model canvas, but each document serves a different purpose.

A business model canvas is a high-level overview that helps entrepreneurs and business owners quickly test and iterate their ideas. It is often a one-page document that briefly outlines the following:

Key partnerships

Key activities

Key propositions

Customer relationships

Customer segments

Key resources

Cost structure

Revenue streams

On the other hand, a Business Plan Template provides a more in-depth analysis of a company's strategy and operations. It is typically a lengthy document and requires significant time and effort to develop.

A business model shouldn’t replace a business plan, and vice versa. Business owners should lay the foundations and visually capture the most important information with a Business Model Canvas Template . Because this is a fast and efficient way to communicate a business idea, a business model canvas is a good starting point before developing a more comprehensive business plan.

A business plan can aim to secure funding from investors or lenders, while a business model canvas communicates a business idea to potential customers or partners.

Why is a business plan important?

A business plan is crucial for any entrepreneur or business owner wanting to increase their chances of success.

Here are some of the many benefits of having a thorough business plan.

Helps to define the business goals and objectives

A business plan encourages you to think critically about your goals and objectives. Doing so lets you clearly understand what you want to achieve and how you plan to get there.

A well-defined set of goals, objectives, and key results also provides a sense of direction and purpose, which helps keep business owners focused and motivated.

Guides decision-making

A business plan requires you to consider different scenarios and potential problems that may arise in your business. This awareness allows you to devise strategies to deal with these issues and avoid pitfalls.

With a clear plan, entrepreneurs can make informed decisions aligning with their overall business goals and objectives. This helps reduce the risk of making costly mistakes and ensures they make decisions with long-term success in mind.

Attracts investors and secures funding

Investors and lenders often require a business plan before considering investing in your business. A document that outlines the company's goals, objectives, and financial forecasts can help instill confidence in potential investors and lenders.

A well-written business plan demonstrates that you have thoroughly thought through your business idea and have a solid plan for success.

Identifies potential challenges and risks

A business plan requires entrepreneurs to consider potential challenges and risks that could impact their business. For example:

Is there enough demand for my product or service?

Will I have enough capital to start my business?

Is the market oversaturated with too many competitors?

What will happen if my marketing strategy is ineffective?

By identifying these potential challenges, entrepreneurs can develop strategies to mitigate risks and overcome challenges. This can reduce the likelihood of costly mistakes and ensure the business is well-positioned to take on any challenges.

Provides a basis for measuring success

A business plan serves as a framework for measuring success by providing clear goals and financial projections . Entrepreneurs can regularly refer to the original business plan as a benchmark to measure progress. By comparing the current business position to initial forecasts, business owners can answer questions such as:

Are we where we want to be at this point?

Did we achieve our goals?

If not, why not, and what do we need to do?

After assessing whether the business is meeting its objectives or falling short, business owners can adjust their strategies as needed.

How to make a business plan step by step

The steps below will guide you through the process of creating a business plan and what key components you need to include.

1. Create an executive summary

Start with a brief overview of your entire plan. The executive summary should cover your business plan's main points and key takeaways.

Keep your executive summary concise and clear with the Executive Summary Template . The simple design helps readers understand the crux of your business plan without reading the entire document.

2. Write your company description

Provide a detailed explanation of your company. Include information on what your company does, the mission statement, and your vision for the future.

Provide additional background information on the history of your company, the founders, and any notable achievements or milestones.

3. Conduct a market analysis

Conduct an in-depth analysis of your industry, competitors, and target market. This is best done with a SWOT analysis to identify your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. Next, identify your target market's needs, demographics, and behaviors.

Use the Competitive Analysis Template to brainstorm answers to simple questions like:

What does the current market look like?

Who are your competitors?

What are they offering?

What will give you a competitive advantage?

Who is your target market?

What are they looking for and why?

How will your product or service satisfy a need?

These questions should give you valuable insights into the current market and where your business stands.

4. Describe your products and services

Provide detailed information about your products and services. This includes pricing information, product features, and any unique selling points.

Use the Product/Market Fit Template to explain how your products meet the needs of your target market. Describe what sets them apart from the competition.

5. Design a marketing and sales strategy

Outline how you plan to promote and sell your products. Your marketing strategy and sales strategy should include information about your:

Pricing strategy

Advertising and promotional tactics

Sales channels

The Go to Market Strategy Template is a great way to visually map how you plan to launch your product or service in a new or existing market.

6. Determine budget and financial projections

Document detailed information on your business’ finances. Describe the current financial position of the company and how you expect the finances to play out.

Some details to include in this section are:

Startup costs

Revenue projections

Profit and loss statement

Funding you have received or plan to receive

Strategy for raising funds

7. Set the organization and management structure

Define how your company is structured and who will be responsible for each aspect of the business. Use the Business Organizational Chart Template to visually map the company’s teams, roles, and hierarchy.

As well as the organization and management structure, discuss the legal structure of your business. Clarify whether your business is a corporation, partnership, sole proprietorship, or LLC.

8. Make an action plan

At this point in your business plan, you’ve described what you’re aiming for. But how are you going to get there? The Action Plan Template describes the following steps to move your business plan forward. Outline the next steps you plan to take to bring your business plan to fruition.

Types of business plans

Several types of business plans cater to different purposes and stages of a company's lifecycle. Here are some of the most common types of business plans.

Startup business plan

A startup business plan is typically an entrepreneur's first business plan. This document helps entrepreneurs articulate their business idea when starting a new business.

Not sure how to make a business plan for a startup? It’s pretty similar to a regular business plan, except the primary purpose of a startup business plan is to convince investors to provide funding for the business. A startup business plan also outlines the potential target market, product/service offering, marketing plan, and financial projections.

Strategic business plan

A strategic business plan is a long-term plan that outlines a company's overall strategy, objectives, and tactics. This type of strategic plan focuses on the big picture and helps business owners set goals and priorities and measure progress.

The primary purpose of a strategic business plan is to provide direction and guidance to the company's management team and stakeholders. The plan typically covers a period of three to five years.

Operational business plan

An operational business plan is a detailed document that outlines the day-to-day operations of a business. It focuses on the specific activities and processes required to run the business, such as:

Organizational structure

Staffing plan

Production plan

Quality control

Inventory management

Supply chain

The primary purpose of an operational business plan is to ensure that the business runs efficiently and effectively. It helps business owners manage their resources, track their performance, and identify areas for improvement.

Growth-business plan

A growth-business plan is a strategic plan that outlines how a company plans to expand its business. It helps business owners identify new market opportunities and increase revenue and profitability. The primary purpose of a growth-business plan is to provide a roadmap for the company's expansion and growth.

The 3 Horizons of Growth Template is a great tool to identify new areas of growth. This framework categorizes growth opportunities into three categories: Horizon 1 (core business), Horizon 2 (emerging business), and Horizon 3 (potential business).

One-page business plan

A one-page business plan is a condensed version of a full business plan that focuses on the most critical aspects of a business. It’s a great tool for entrepreneurs who want to quickly communicate their business idea to potential investors, partners, or employees.

A one-page business plan typically includes sections such as business concept, value proposition, revenue streams, and cost structure.

Best practices for how to make a good business plan

Here are some additional tips for creating a business plan:

Use a template

A template can help you organize your thoughts and effectively communicate your business ideas and strategies. Starting with a template can also save you time and effort when formatting your plan.

Miro’s extensive library of customizable templates includes all the necessary sections for a comprehensive business plan. With our templates, you can confidently present your business plans to stakeholders and investors.

Be practical

Avoid overestimating revenue projections or underestimating expenses. Your business plan should be grounded in practical realities like your budget, resources, and capabilities.

Be specific

Provide as much detail as possible in your business plan. A specific plan is easier to execute because it provides clear guidance on what needs to be done and how. Without specific details, your plan may be too broad or vague, making it difficult to know where to start or how to measure success.

Be thorough with your research

Conduct thorough research to fully understand the market, your competitors, and your target audience . By conducting thorough research, you can identify potential risks and challenges your business may face and develop strategies to mitigate them.

Get input from others

It can be easy to become overly focused on your vision and ideas, leading to tunnel vision and a lack of objectivity. By seeking input from others, you can identify potential opportunities you may have overlooked.

Review and revise regularly

A business plan is a living document. You should update it regularly to reflect market, industry, and business changes. Set aside time for regular reviews and revisions to ensure your plan remains relevant and effective.

Create a winning business plan to chart your path to success

Starting or growing a business can be challenging, but it doesn't have to be. Whether you're a seasoned entrepreneur or just starting, a well-written business plan can make or break your business’ success.

The purpose of a business plan is more than just to secure funding and attract investors. It also serves as a roadmap for achieving your business goals and realizing your vision. With the right mindset, tools, and strategies, you can develop a visually appealing, persuasive business plan.

Ready to make an effective business plan that works for you? Check out our library of ready-made strategy and planning templates and chart your path to success.

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Top 10 Organizational Plan Templates with Samples and Examples

Taranjeet Singh

Organizational plans are the foundation upon which companies build their strategies, set their objectives, and chart their course toward success. Did you know organizations with well-defined plans are 50% more likely to achieve their goals and objectives? It's no secret that a well-structured plan can be the key to success in business and management.

The Importance of Organizational Plans

Organizational plans are the blueprints that guide an organization toward its goals and aspirations. These plans outline the structure, roles, and responsibilities of individuals within the organization, ensuring that everyone is on the same page.

Fast-track your success to the next level with our coaching action plan templates .

These actionable plans provide a clear direction for the company, helping to prioritize tasks and allocate resources efficiently. In essence, organizational plans are the roadmaps that lead businesses to their desired destinations.

Organizational Plan Templates from SlideTeam: Your Solution

Creating a plan from scratch can be demanding, especially when dealing with complex structures or tight timelines. But the question is, how can you create an effective plan that aligns your team and maximizes your chances of success?

The answer is Organizational Plan Templates from SlideTeam.

Navigate change with confidence with our organizational change management plan templates .

These PowerPoint templates offer a comprehensive and visually appealing framework for developing organizational plans.

Moreover, these templates are designed to be flexible, allowing you to customize them to suit your requirements. They provide the structure and the guidance, but you have the creative freedom to make them your own.

Protect your digital assets with our cyber security strategic plan templates .

In the fast-paced business world, time is of the essence, and with our powerpoint templates , you can save valuable hours and focus on your business. You can focus on what truly matters – strategizing, communicating your vision, and guiding your team towards success.

In this blog, we will explore how SlideTeam's templates work and provide practical tips for leveraging these templates to maximize the efficiency and clarity of your organizational planning. Let’s begin!

Template 1: Organizational Planning PowerPoint Deck

With over 35 information-packed slides, this PowerPoint deck supports your decision-making and improves your company's performance. Explore vital aspects of your organization's current situation with dedicated slides that showcase key performance indicators (KPIs), including attraction KPIs, value KPIs, retention KPIs, and engagement KPIs. Assess your organization's readiness for development using a handy checklist, and gain a clear understanding of the organizational development framework, encompassing the "why," "what," and "how" of growth. Additionally, the deck provides insights into the selection of management styles, highlighting their features and their impact on your organization's success rate. Identify areas for improvement with a specialized slide on management skills training, outlining employees' needs, goals, and estimated training costs. Download our PowerPoint deck and take your strategic development to the next level.

Download Now!

Template 2: Strategic Organizational Plan for Leadership Development PowerPoint Theme

This powerful one-page presentation delivers all the essential information for effective leadership development. It is structured to help you outline leadership goals, strategies, Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), and target dates with utmost clarity and conciseness. Download this PowerPoint theme today to streamline your leadership development efforts and drive success.

Template 3: Approach And Activities to Restructure Organizational Plan PowerPoint Layout

This PowerPoint presentation is divided into three critical sections, each offering strategic insights and actionable steps.

The first section, "Operational and Commercial Due Diligence," provides a detailed overview of assessing your organization's current state and identifies key areas that require attention.

The second section, "First 100 Days - Successfully Takeover Control," is a roadmap for the initial restructuring phase, ensuring a seamless transition of power.

The third section, "Restructuring + Interim Management," delves into the core activities required to implement structural changes efficiently.

Download our PowerPoint Set to make informed decisions to restructure your organization effectively.

Template 4: Organizational Planning Process for Virtual Terrorism PowerPoint Preset (to avoid it)

This presentation unfolds a strategic roadmap in four concise steps. Step 1 involves an overall analysis of your work culture's vulnerabilities and threats related to virtual terrorism. Step 2 delves into establishing a robust cybersecurity framework, a cornerstone for your defense. Step 3 helps you identify and define the specific programs required to enhance your cybersecurity measures. Finally, Step 4 guides you in documenting and formalizing your cybersecurity program, ensuring its continuity and accountability. Download the C yber Security PPT PowerPoint Deck to fortify your defenses.

Template 5: Strategic Perspective for Effective Organizational Planning PowerPoint Template

This presentation offers a unique approach, presenting a three-pronged strategy to navigate the intricate world of strategic planning. Hindsight, the first perspective, empowers you to meticulously analyze the past and determine its impact on your organization.

Insight, the second perspective, delves deep into discovering organizational problems. Identify their root causes, enabling you to address issues at their core rather than merely addressing surface-level symptoms.

Foresight, the final perspective, equips you to construct a forward-thinking strategy to alleviate the impact of identified problems. By taking a proactive approach, you can make sure that your organization remains resilient and agile in the face of future challenges.

Download this PPT Slide and transform your organizational planning into a strategic powerhouse.

Template 6: Manual Steps for Strategic Organizational Planning PowerPoint Layout

This PowerPoint Layout is the definitive resource for professionals seeking a strategic edge in organizational planning. It offers a concise and compelling roadmap comprising eight essential manual steps to guide you through the strategic planning process.

Each step is designed to provide a proper understanding of the strategic planning journey, ensuring that your organization moves forward with clarity and precision. This template equips you with the knowledge and tools required for effective decision-making, aligning your team's efforts towards common objectives.

With its clear and concise content, this slide is your trusted companion for strategic organizational planning.

Download this invaluable resource now and steer your organization towards a prosperous future.

Template 7: 6 Stage Cycle of Organizational Planning Process PowerPoint Preset

This PPT presentation highlights the six critical stages of the planning process, offering a structured approach to help your organization reach its goals.

Starting with the crucial initial step of setting clear objectives, this template guides you through gathering relevant data, followed by a meticulous information analysis. Once data has been thoroughly examined, the presentation assists in creating a well-structured plan, ensuring your strategy aligns perfectly with your objectives.

The implementation phase is detailed, providing valuable insights into effectively putting your plan into action. Finally, the monitoring stage is presented to help you track and evaluate your plan's progress, ensuring adjustments can be made as needed.

Download it now to equip your team with a clear and concise roadmap to success.

Template 8: 5 Elements for Organizational Planning and Objectives PowerPoint Template

This PowerPoint presentation is designed to streamline your organizational planning and objectives by highlighting five critical elements: Plan, Objectives, Innovation, Monitoring, and Investment. With a concise slide, it provides a straightforward and highly usable resource for conveying key concepts to your team or stakeholders. It simplifies complex ideas and helps you convey the essence of your strategic vision. Download the template and empower your presentations with clarity, simplicity, and impact.

Download Now

Template 9: Multiple Organizational Projects Plan Report PowerPoint Layout

This PowerPoint presentation is an invaluable tool for presenting and tracking multiple projects within your organization.

Our template provides a clear, concise, and data-driven overview of your projects, including project details such as tasks, status, owner, assigned team members, anticipated start and end dates, actual end dates, estimated costs, and actual costs. With this comprehensive report, you can easily monitor the progress of your projects, ensuring that they stay on track and within budget.

Download PowerPoint template and take control of your projects like never before.

Template 10: One Pager IT Company Strategic Organizational Plan in Entrepreneurship PowerPoint Presentation

This dynamic and informative presentation offers an overview of your IT company's strategic roadmap, designed to propel your business to new heights.

In this presentation, you will find a thorough company overview showcasing your mission, values, and competitive advantage, allowing your audience to understand your organization's core principles. Dive into your organization-wide strategies, which outline the path to success.

The strategic organizational goals section breaks down your financial, customer, international/operational, people, and learning objectives, guiding your team towards clear, actionable targets. Additionally, our presentation includes an easily navigable organizational chart, providing insight into your company's structure and hierarchy.

Download this template to bring your strategic vision to life.

In exploring Organizational Plan Templates from SlideTeam, we've seen how these powerful tools can elevate your business planning. With their ready-made structure and visual appeal, these templates simplify crafting robust organizational plans, allowing you to focus on the essence of your strategy. By implementing these templates, your organization gains a more precise direction, smoother communication, and better resource allocation. Embrace the future with a well-defined roadmap, and watch your organization thrive.

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Business Plan - Management and Organization

Management and Organization Section of a Business Plan

Written by Jason Gordon

Updated at April 21st, 2024

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What is the Management and Organization Section of the Business Plan?

Outline your organizational structure and then tell about your primaries. How your business will be managed and who will be involved is an important consideration in your choice of business entity. For example, in a partnership, it is assumed that partners have equal control in managing the business. In an LLC you make the choice of whether it will be managed by members of the LLC or by hired managers. 

In a corporation, the owners/shareholders may or may not be a part of the management team. In any of the above situations, you will want to develop a plan for the roles of individual members. While individual member roles and responsibilities often change rapidly, you want to have a formalized chain of authority within the business. Remember, too many decision-makers and no single person with authority can be a major challenge to the success of a business.

Business Management

This section should include the names, positions, and general biography of the key business personnel. This section will be incredibly important to outsider investors (angels or venture capitalists) who are assessing your business. Within the Business Management section you should include answers to the following questions:

• Name : Who are the key individuals involved in the management of your business?
• Title : What will be that person's title?
• Responsibilities : What primary responsibilities does that position entail?
• Qualifications : What is their background and qualifications for carrying out their intended responsibilities? (This will include work experience, educational degrees, and prior experience in startup ventures.)

Organizational Chart

I recommend that you create a formalized flow-chart demonstrating the hierarchy of authority within the business. This organizational chart should be cross-laid with the key core operational responsibilities of the business. For example, you may split the business responsibilities into: Operations, Sales & Marketing, and Administration & Governance. Outlining the business in this fashion will give individuals a clear sense of their responsibilities. Further, it will establish formal chains of authority that will become increasingly important as the business grows. As you add new employees you will want to integrate them within the organizational chart.Make clear the chain of authority and reporting. Outline both the responsibilities of each individual and their authority to represent the interests of the business. As the business grows you will gradually become more and more specific about the roles and responsibilities of individual members.You may also consider developing a plan for cross-training individuals for specific tasks? You don't want your business to hinge or become dependent solely on the presence of a single individual. This chart will also serve as credentials for business when approaching outside investors. These investors will want to see that the business is stable and that there is ample talent to perform all of the functions necessary to carry out the business's functions and grow goals.  

Professional and Advisory Support

When forming your business you will begin to forge relationships with outside parties who can provide advice and services to your business. Depending on your business organization, you may have professional advisors, such as a board of directors or you may have a less formal advisory board. Below are a list and explanation of some of the more common professional and advisory support for a startup business.

• Accountant - An accountant can be extremely valuable in 3 areas: Entity formation, business compliance, and tax strategy. An accountant will be able to help you understand the tax considerations that go into choosing an entity type. They can also help you understand the rules for business compliance state and federal income tax, tax deductions, tax credits, sales & use, transfer, deductions, capital gain loss, employee withholding, estimated tax payments, financial statements, auditing, etc.
• Small Business Attorney - A small business attorney is useful in a number of important areas. Entity selection and formation, contracts, intellectual property, employment law, securities regulation, business compliance & governance, collection efforts, etc.
• Insurance Agent - Depending on the nature of the business, you may require various types of insurance coverage. Common types of insurance includes casualty & damage on property, personal injury protection, professional liability, life insurance, health insurance in employee benefit plans, etc.
• Banker - I cannot express the importance of having a relationship with your bank representative. Many small businesses make the mistake of banking with large financial institutions, rather than choosing smaller, more intimate, local banks. When you are seeking loans to operate your business you will have a much easier time working with a banker who knows you personally and understands your business.
• Mentors - Find someone who you know and respect to serve as your mentor. Preferably, this is someone who has experience with startup ventures. Starting a venture can be nerve-racking. It helps to have someone close who has gone through this process before. This person will provide moral support more than expertise in a particular industry.
• Board of Advisors - A board of advisors is like a semi-formal group of mentors. Rather than providing moral support, these individuals help to guide you through the process of starting, managing and growing your business. You should try to assemble a diverse group with a variety of professional experiences. Preferably, these individuals will be a mix of knowledgeable entrepreneurs and industry experts.
• Board of Directors - If you choose the corporate form to do business, you will have a board of directors. Many closely held corporations don't have outside members on the board of directors; rather, the board consists of the owners and key members. As the business begins to grow, you may have directors who are either equity investors or experts who you compensate with equity ownership. In either case, you should seek investors and experts who can provide the greatest degree of guidance and support to your business.

You will want to detail the names, experience, and qualifications of these individuals within the business plan. The primary purpose is to demonstrate to outside investors that you have adequate support to handle your operations and intended growth path.

Related Topics

• Business Plan, Part 1 (Outline Overview)
• Business Plan, Part 2 (The Executive Summary)
• What is a Mission Statement?
• What is a Values Statement?
• Setting Company Goals
• Business Plan, Part 4 (Market Analysis)
• Business Plan, Part 5 (Competitive Analysis)
• Business Plan, Part 6 (Marketing Plan)
• Business Plan, Part 7 (Operations)
• Business Plan, Part 8  (Management and Organization)
• Business Plan, Part 9 (Financial Projections)
• Business Plan, Part 10 (Appendices)
• Business Plan , (Final Modifications)

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What Is Organizational Planning in Project Management?

If you’re looking to start or grow a business (or just keep a business profitable), you need a business plan. But not all plans are the same. If you need to define your business and its objectives, you need to use organizational planning.

That planning provides a clear path forward. When you organize the various departments of your business, everyone knows what their function is—and the tasks and processes necessary to achieve your business goals.

What Is Organizational Planning?

Organizational planning is how business owners organize the day-to-day operations of a business. This can range from simple things, like the companies’ reason for existence, to more complex considerations, like setting goals to realize a specific objective. You use the organizational plan as a framework for creating tasks that, when executed, will allow the company to achieve its goal.

Organizational planning is often used to improve a company’s overall business, but a company can direct it towards its workforce, finances or products. There are, therefore, various types of organizational planning goals; from workforce development and financial planning to products, services and expansion planning.

That’s a lot of data to organize. ProjectManager has interactive Gantt charts that help you organize all that information, create a functional plan and manage it successfully. Try ProjectManager today for free!

Why Organizational Planning Is Important

It goes without saying that the better you organize your company, the better your company performs. Organizational planning is important because it lets companies develop effective planning and achieve their stated goals.

Having an organizational plan is also helpful because a prepared company responds better to changes in the workplace. Furthermore, organization planning clarifies the roles, responsibilities and expectations of everyone in the company. This helps management make sure they’re meeting the determined benchmarks.

Because organizational planning creates a structure where relationships between teams and managers are clearly defined, it can also reveal where there are any shortcomings, issues or liabilities. The company can then resolve these hamstringing limitations.

Typical Organizational Planning Processes

These phases of organizational planning are defined in these four processes:

• Strategic Planning: This is the big picture view for the company. Here, you define the company goals. The goals must align with the overall mission, vision and values of the company. This process involves upper management, though you can bring employees into the discussion.
• Tactical Planning: Next, the discussion moves toward how to implement the developed plan. These are more short-term goals, usually no more than a year in duration. This is where middle management takes the ball, in terms of creating plans and marketing campaigns.
• Operational Planning: Now we’ve come to the day-to-day operations necessary to execute the tactical plan. This is where you set up work schedules, policies, rules and regulations for employees. You also assign specific tasks and create a protocol for tracking work.
• Contingency Planning: It’s important to have a backup plan or two in case of unforeseen events or issues that make the original plan impossible. Spend time thinking of possible risks and responses. Events include natural disasters, software malfunctions or the departure of a C-level executive from the company.

How to Make an Organizational Plan

The four phases of the organizational planning process create a framework, but there are different steps when making an organizational plan:

• Start with the goals and objectives of the company: Where do you want to be in the short- and long-term? Then, assemble a team to lead the execution, tracking and progress of the plan.
• Create a chart that illustrates the organizational structure of the plan: Share it with the whole company and keep them updated on progress as you hit milestones set for the long- and short-term.
• Define the company goals and objectives: Make this a detailed list to help everyone understand the goals and objectives, as well as their part in realizing them.
• Create a task list with roles for everyone on your team: Assign them tasks and make sure the team understands what is expected of them.
• Review where the company is currently: What processes are in place at this moment? Reviewing this allows the team to see what they need to do to reach the company growth targets.
• Take what you’ve collected and put it in a document: Use this to track progress when you execute the organizational plan.

How to Communicate Your Organizational Plan to the Team

Once you’ve created an organizational plan, you need to communicate it to the team. This is a crucial step. If you implement a plan without having everyone understand it, you may have problems that might derail the whole plan.

One way to get everyone on the same page is to call a company-wide meeting. Have a tight agenda that details the organizational plan, and get feedback from those in attendance. You can also create a one-sheet, and distribute it prior to or during the meeting.

If your company has project management software, you can bring the whole company in on the organizational plan, assign tasks and communicate through the tool if they have any questions. Then, when you implement the organizational plan, you can track progress and ensure everyone stays in communication.

How ProjectManager Helps with Organizational Planning

ProjectManager is a cloud-based tool with multiple project views that allow managers and their teams to choose the tool that they want to work with. No matter which they use, data is shared across the platform so everyone is working from the most current data.

Lay Out Entire Plans on Gantt Charts

Begin planning by organizing tasks and adding deadlines. Gantt charts are the traditional tool to get all your work on a timeline, but not all Gantt charts are the same. ProjectManager’s Gantt chart project view lets you to filter for the critical path without any complicated calculations. You see what is essential, and what you can skip, if time and money become an issue.

Set Baselines to Track Progress

Once the schedule is completed, you can set a baseline. This captures your planned effort around tasks, resources cost and more. That means, once you start to execute your plan, you can compare the actual effort to your planned effort to make sure you’re keeping on track.

Get Real-Time Data from Dashboards and Reports

To keep an eye on progress and performance, use ProjectManager’s live dashboard. It collects data, automatically calculates it and displays it in easy-to-read graphs and charts. Unlike other software, you don’t need to configure the dashboard; it’s up and running from the start.

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ProjectManager is award-winning software that has everything you need to plan, execute and track your organizational plan. With timesheets, automated notifications and kanban boards, managers get transparency and teams have the autonomy to manage their tasks. See how ProjectManager can help you with organizational planning and take a free trial today.

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What is strategic planning? A 5-step guide

Strategic planning is a process through which business leaders map out their vision for their organization’s growth and how they’re going to get there. In this article, we'll guide you through the strategic planning process, including why it's important, the benefits and best practices, and five steps to get you from beginning to end.

Strategic planning is a process through which business leaders map out their vision for their organization’s growth and how they’re going to get there. The strategic planning process informs your organization’s decisions, growth, and goals.

Strategic planning helps you clearly define your company’s long-term objectives—and maps how your short-term goals and work will help you achieve them. This, in turn, gives you a clear sense of where your organization is going and allows you to ensure your teams are working on projects that make the most impact. Think of it this way—if your goals and objectives are your destination on a map, your strategic plan is your navigation system.

In this article, we walk you through the 5-step strategic planning process and show you how to get started developing your own strategic plan.

How to build an organizational strategy

Get our free ebook and learn how to bridge the gap between mission, strategic goals, and work at your organization.

What is strategic planning?

Strategic planning is a business process that helps you define and share the direction your company will take in the next three to five years. During the strategic planning process, stakeholders review and define the organization’s mission and goals, conduct competitive assessments, and identify company goals and objectives. The product of the planning cycle is a strategic plan, which is shared throughout the company.

What is a strategic plan?

A strategic plan is the end result of the strategic planning process. At its most basic, it’s a tool used to define your organization’s goals and what actions you’ll take to achieve them.

Typically, your strategic plan should include: 

Your company’s mission statement

Your organizational goals, including your long-term goals and short-term, yearly objectives

Any plan of action, tactics, or approaches you plan to take to meet those goals

What are the benefits of strategic planning?

Strategic planning can help with goal setting and decision-making by allowing you to map out how your company will move toward your organization’s vision and mission statements in the next three to five years. Let’s circle back to our map metaphor. If you think of your company trajectory as a line on a map, a strategic plan can help you better quantify how you’ll get from point A (where you are now) to point B (where you want to be in a few years).

When you create and share a clear strategic plan with your team, you can:

Build a strong organizational culture by clearly defining and aligning on your organization’s mission, vision, and goals.

Align everyone around a shared purpose and ensure all departments and teams are working toward a common objective.

Proactively set objectives to help you get where you want to go and achieve desired outcomes.

Promote a long-term vision for your company rather than focusing primarily on short-term gains.

Ensure resources are allocated around the most high-impact priorities.

Define long-term goals and set shorter-term goals to support them.

Assess your current situation and identify any opportunities—or threats—allowing your organization to mitigate potential risks.

Create a proactive business culture that enables your organization to respond more swiftly to emerging market changes and opportunities.

What are the 5 steps in strategic planning?

The strategic planning process involves a structured methodology that guides the organization from vision to implementation. The strategic planning process starts with assembling a small, dedicated team of key strategic planners—typically five to 10 members—who will form the strategic planning, or management, committee. This team is responsible for gathering crucial information, guiding the development of the plan, and overseeing strategy execution.

Once you’ve established your management committee, you can get to work on the planning process. 

Step 1: Assess your current business strategy and business environment

Before you can define where you’re going, you first need to define where you are. Understanding the external environment, including market trends and competitive landscape, is crucial in the initial assessment phase of strategic planning.

To do this, your management committee should collect a variety of information from additional stakeholders, like employees and customers. In particular, plan to gather:

Relevant industry and market data to inform any market opportunities, as well as any potential upcoming threats in the near future.

Customer insights to understand what your customers want from your company—like product improvements or additional services.

Employee feedback that needs to be addressed—whether about the product, business practices, or the day-to-day company culture.

Consider different types of strategic planning tools and analytical techniques to gather this information, such as:

A balanced scorecard to help you evaluate four major elements of a business: learning and growth, business processes, customer satisfaction, and financial performance.

A SWOT analysis to help you assess both current and future potential for the business (you’ll return to this analysis periodically during the strategic planning process). 

To fill out each letter in the SWOT acronym, your management committee will answer a series of questions:

What does your organization currently do well?

What separates you from your competitors?

What are your most valuable internal resources?

What tangible assets do you have?

What is your biggest strength? 

Weaknesses:

What does your organization do poorly?

What do you currently lack (whether that’s a product, resource, or process)?

What do your competitors do better than you?

What, if any, limitations are holding your organization back?

What processes or products need improvement? 

Opportunities:

What opportunities does your organization have?

How can you leverage your unique company strengths?

Are there any trends that you can take advantage of?

How can you capitalize on marketing or press opportunities?

Is there an emerging need for your product or service? 

What emerging competitors should you keep an eye on?

Are there any weaknesses that expose your organization to risk?

Have you or could you experience negative press that could reduce market share?

Is there a chance of changing customer attitudes towards your company? 

Step 2: Identify your company’s goals and objectives

To begin strategy development, take into account your current position, which is where you are now. Then, draw inspiration from your vision, mission, and current position to identify and define your goals—these are your final destination. 

To develop your strategy, you’re essentially pulling out your compass and asking, “Where are we going next?” “What’s the ideal future state of this company?” This can help you figure out which path you need to take to get there.

During this phase of the planning process, take inspiration from important company documents, such as:

Your mission statement, to understand how you can continue moving towards your organization’s core purpose.

Your vision statement, to clarify how your strategic plan fits into your long-term vision.

Your company values, to guide you towards what matters most towards your company.

Your competitive advantages, to understand what unique benefit you offer to the market.

Your long-term goals, to track where you want to be in five or 10 years.

Your financial forecast and projection, to understand where you expect your financials to be in the next three years, what your expected cash flow is, and what new opportunities you will likely be able to invest in.

Step 3: Develop your strategic plan and determine performance metrics

Now that you understand where you are and where you want to go, it’s time to put pen to paper. Take your current business position and strategy into account, as well as your organization’s goals and objectives, and build out a strategic plan for the next three to five years. Keep in mind that even though you’re creating a long-term plan, parts of your plan should be created or revisited as the quarters and years go on.

As you build your strategic plan, you should define:

Company priorities for the next three to five years, based on your SWOT analysis and strategy.

Yearly objectives for the first year. You don’t need to define your objectives for every year of the strategic plan. As the years go on, create new yearly objectives that connect back to your overall strategic goals . 

Related key results and KPIs. Some of these should be set by the management committee, and some should be set by specific teams that are closer to the work. Make sure your key results and KPIs are measurable and actionable. These KPIs will help you track progress and ensure you’re moving in the right direction.

Budget for the next year or few years. This should be based on your financial forecast as well as your direction. Do you need to spend aggressively to develop your product? Build your team? Make a dent with marketing? Clarify your most important initiatives and how you’ll budget for those.

A high-level project roadmap . A project roadmap is a tool in project management that helps you visualize the timeline of a complex initiative, but you can also create a very high-level project roadmap for your strategic plan. Outline what you expect to be working on in certain quarters or years to make the plan more actionable and understandable.

Step 4: Implement and share your plan

Now it’s time to put your plan into action. Strategy implementation involves clear communication across your entire organization to make sure everyone knows their responsibilities and how to measure the plan’s success. 

Make sure your team (especially senior leadership) has access to the strategic plan, so they can understand how their work contributes to company priorities and the overall strategy map. We recommend sharing your plan in the same tool you use to manage and track work, so you can more easily connect high-level objectives to daily work. If you don’t already, consider using a work management platform .  

A few tips to make sure your plan will be executed without a hitch: 

Communicate clearly to your entire organization throughout the implementation process, to ensure all team members understand the strategic plan and how to implement it effectively. 

Define what “success” looks like by mapping your strategic plan to key performance indicators.

Ensure that the actions outlined in the strategic plan are integrated into the daily operations of the organization, so that every team member's daily activities are aligned with the broader strategic objectives.

Utilize tools and software—like a work management platform—that can aid in implementing and tracking the progress of your plan.

Regularly monitor and share the progress of the strategic plan with the entire organization, to keep everyone informed and reinforce the importance of the plan.

Establish regular check-ins to monitor the progress of your strategic plan and make adjustments as needed. 

Step 5: Revise and restructure as needed

Once you’ve created and implemented your new strategic framework, the final step of the planning process is to monitor and manage your plan.

Remember, your strategic plan isn’t set in stone. You’ll need to revisit and update the plan if your company changes directions or makes new investments. As new market opportunities and threats come up, you’ll likely want to tweak your strategic plan. Make sure to review your plan regularly—meaning quarterly and annually—to ensure it’s still aligned with your organization’s vision and goals.

Keep in mind that your plan won’t last forever, even if you do update it frequently. A successful strategic plan evolves with your company’s long-term goals. When you’ve achieved most of your strategic goals, or if your strategy has evolved significantly since you first made your plan, it might be time to create a new one.

Build a smarter strategic plan with a work management platform

To turn your company strategy into a plan—and ultimately, impact—make sure you’re proactively connecting company objectives to daily work. When you can clarify this connection, you’re giving your team members the context they need to get their best work done. 

A work management platform plays a pivotal role in this process. It acts as a central hub for your strategic plan, ensuring that every task and project is directly tied to your broader company goals. This alignment is crucial for visibility and coordination, allowing team members to see how their individual efforts contribute to the company’s success. 

By leveraging such a platform, you not only streamline workflow and enhance team productivity but also align every action with your strategic objectives—allowing teams to drive greater impact and helping your company move toward goals more effectively. 

Strategic planning FAQs

Still have questions about strategic planning? We have answers.

Why do I need a strategic plan?

A strategic plan is one of many tools you can use to plan and hit your goals. It helps map out strategic objectives and growth metrics that will help your company be successful.

When should I create a strategic plan?

You should aim to create a strategic plan every three to five years, depending on your organization’s growth speed.

Since the point of a strategic plan is to map out your long-term goals and how you’ll get there, you should create a strategic plan when you’ve met most or all of them. You should also create a strategic plan any time you’re going to make a large pivot in your organization’s mission or enter new markets. 

What is a strategic planning template?

A strategic planning template is a tool organizations can use to map out their strategic plan and track progress. Typically, a strategic planning template houses all the components needed to build out a strategic plan, including your company’s vision and mission statements, information from any competitive analyses or SWOT assessments, and relevant KPIs.

What’s the difference between a strategic plan vs. business plan?

A business plan can help you document your strategy as you’re getting started so every team member is on the same page about your core business priorities and goals. This tool can help you document and share your strategy with key investors or stakeholders as you get your business up and running.

You should create a business plan when you’re: 

Just starting your business

Significantly restructuring your business

If your business is already established, you should create a strategic plan instead of a business plan. Even if you’re working at a relatively young company, your strategic plan can build on your business plan to help you move in the right direction. During the strategic planning process, you’ll draw from a lot of the fundamental business elements you built early on to establish your strategy for the next three to five years.

What’s the difference between a strategic plan vs. mission and vision statements?

Your strategic plan, mission statement, and vision statements are all closely connected. In fact, during the strategic planning process, you will take inspiration from your mission and vision statements in order to build out your strategic plan.

Simply put: 

A mission statement summarizes your company’s purpose.

A vision statement broadly explains how you’ll reach your company’s purpose.

A strategic plan pulls in inspiration from your mission and vision statements and outlines what actions you’re going to take to move in the right direction. 

For example, if your company produces pet safety equipment, here’s how your mission statement, vision statement, and strategic plan might shake out:

Mission statement: “To ensure the safety of the world’s animals.” 

Vision statement: “To create pet safety and tracking products that are effortless to use.” 

Your strategic plan would outline the steps you’re going to take in the next few years to bring your company closer to your mission and vision. For example, you develop a new pet tracking smart collar or improve the microchipping experience for pet owners. 

What’s the difference between a strategic plan vs. company objectives?

Company objectives are broad goals. You should set these on a yearly or quarterly basis (if your organization moves quickly). These objectives give your team a clear sense of what you intend to accomplish for a set period of time. 

Your strategic plan is more forward-thinking than your company goals, and it should cover more than one year of work. Think of it this way: your company objectives will move the needle towards your overall strategy—but your strategic plan should be bigger than company objectives because it spans multiple years.

What’s the difference between a strategic plan vs. a business case?

A business case is a document to help you pitch a significant investment or initiative for your company. When you create a business case, you’re outlining why this investment is a good idea, and how this large-scale project will positively impact the business. 

You might end up building business cases for things on your strategic plan’s roadmap—but your strategic plan should be bigger than that. This tool should encompass multiple years of your roadmap, across your entire company—not just one initiative.

What’s the difference between a strategic plan vs. a project plan?

A strategic plan is a company-wide, multi-year plan of what you want to accomplish in the next three to five years and how you plan to accomplish that. A project plan, on the other hand, outlines how you’re going to accomplish a specific project. This project could be one of many initiatives that contribute to a specific company objective which, in turn, is one of many objectives that contribute to your strategic plan. 

What’s the difference between strategic management vs. strategic planning?

A strategic plan is a tool to define where your organization wants to go and what actions you need to take to achieve those goals. Strategic planning is the process of creating a plan in order to hit your strategic objectives.

Strategic management includes the strategic planning process, but also goes beyond it. In addition to planning how you will achieve your big-picture goals, strategic management also helps you organize your resources and figure out the best action plans for success. 

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Organizational Plan in Entrepreneurship: Meaning and Types

What is an organizational plan.

Organizational Planning includes establishing the business’s legal ownership, formal structure, and operational duties. It involves selecting the suitable legal structure, whether sole proprietorship, partnership, or corporation, influencing taxation, liability, and ownership aspects. Furthermore, it describes the formal structure by defining roles, responsibilities, and interactions among members. Additionally, organizational planning outlines the informal organization or culture, including attitudes, behaviors, and communication styles within the business.

Key Takeaways: The organizational plan is a mandatory component of a business blueprint, defining ownership structure and operational procedures. The organizational plan provides a strategic roadmap for sustainable growth and success, regardless of the business type or legal structure. Distinct types of organizational plans include manufacturing, wholesale, retail, and service, each tailored to specific business models. Legal structures like Sole Proprietorship, Partnership, Joint Hindu Family, and Corporation offer distinct advantages and challenges.

Table of Content

Types of Organizational Plans

1. manufacturing organizational plan, 2. wholesale organizational plan, 3. retail organizational plan, 4. service organizational plan, types of organization based on legality, 1. sole proprietorship, 2. partnership, 3. joint hindu family, 4. cooperative society, 5. corporation.

a. Production of Tangible Goods : Manufacturing organizations focus on producing tangible goods such as consumer products, industrial equipment, or raw materials. The focus lies on optimizing production processes to ensure efficiency and quality.

b. Key Components: Within the organizational structure, departments like production, engineering, procurement, and quality assurance play key roles. Each department contributes to the smooth operation of the manufacturing process, from sourcing raw materials to delivering finished products.

For instance, a clothing manufacturer may design, produce, and distribute its branded apparel. It will involve various stages, including fabric sourcing, garment production, quality control, and distribution logistics .

a. Procurement and Resale: Wholesale operations involve purchasing products in bulk from manufacturers or suppliers for resale to retailers or other businesses. The focus is on procuring goods at competitive prices and distributing them efficiently.

b. Organizational Structure: The organizational structure typically includes departments such as procurement, logistics, warehousing, and sales . Each department plays a crucial role in managing inventory, fulfilling orders, and maintaining customer relationships.

For instance, A wholesale distributor of electronic components purchases products in bulk from manufacturers and resells them to distinct electronics retailers and repair shops. It involves managing inventory levels, coordinating shipments, and maintaining relationships with suppliers and customers.

a. Direct Sales to End Consumers: Retail firms directly sells products or services to end consumers for personal or household use. The focus on providing a convenient and satisfying shopping experience for customers .

b. Organizational Components: Key components of the organizational structure include store operations, customer service, merchandising, and marketing departments. These departments work together to attract customers, manage inventory, and ensure customer satisfaction.

For instance, A clothing retail store sells directly to individual customers through its physical locations and online platform. The store focuses on offering a wide range of products, providing excellent customer service, and creating an inviting atmosphere for shoppers.

a. Provision of Intangible Services: Service-oriented businesses provide intangible services such as professional expertise, consulting, or personal services. The focus is on delivering high-quality services that meet the needs of clients.

b. Organizational Structure : Departments like client management, service delivery, quality assurance, and business development are common in the organizational structure of service businesses. Each department plays a vital role in delivering exceptional service to clients.

For instance, A management consulting firm provides strategic advisory services to corporate clients. The firm’s organizational structure includes departments for client management, service delivery, and business development. Consultants work closely with clients to understand their needs, develop tailored solutions, and ensure successful outcomes.

A sole proprietorship is a business owned and operated by a single individual who is personally responsible for all aspects of the firm. It is the simplest form of business entity, where the owner assumes full control over decision-making and management.

• Characteristics: In a sole proprietorship, the business and the owner are considered the same legal entity, implying that the owner is personally liable for all business debts and obligations. This structure shall be characterized by its simplicity in establishment, as there are minimal legal formalities involved. Additionally, the sole proprietor retains all profits generated by the business, providing a direct incentive for entrepreneurial efforts.
• Legal Structure: Legally, there is no distinction between the owner and the business in a sole proprietorship. It means that the owner bears unlimited personal liability, exposing personal assets to business risks. Consequently, creditors can pursue the owner’s assets to satisfy business debts or legal claims.
• Advantages : Sole Proprietorship offers direct control and autonomy to the owner, allowing for quick decision-making and agility in responding to market changes. Furthermore, there are minimal regulatory requirements and administrative burdens associated with this structure, making it attractive to small business owners and startups.
• Disadvantages: The primary cons of a sole proprietorship is unlimited personal liability, which exposes the owner’s assets to business risks. Moreover, sole proprietors may face challenges in accessing capital or securing financing, as lenders may perceive higher risk due to the lack of formal structure and limited liability protection. Additionally, there may be difficulties in ensuring business continuity in the event of illness, incapacity, or death of the owner.

For instance, a local bakery owned and managed by a single individual. Here, the owner is responsible for all aspects of the business, including baking, sales, marketing, and customer service. The bakery operates under the proprietor’s name, and all profits generated belong solely to the owner.

A partnership refers to a business structure owned and managed by two or more individuals who share profits, losses, and responsibilities. Partnerships are formed through mutual agreements between the partners , outlining their respective roles, contributions, and rights within the business.

• Characteristics: Partnerships are characterized by shared decision-making, where partners collaborate on strategic initiatives and operational matters. Each partner contributes capital, skills, or resources to the business, and profits are distributed among partners based on the terms of the partnership agreement . Partnerships foster collaboration and synergy among partners, leveraging diverse skill sets and expertise.
• Legal Structure: Partnerships can take various forms, including general partnerships, limited partnerships, or limited liability partnerships , each with distinct legal implications. In a general partnership, all partners have equal rights and responsibilities, while limited partnerships involve both general partners with unlimited liability and limited partners with liability limited to their investment. Limited liability partnerships offer liability protection to all partners, similar to corporations.
• Advantages : Partnerships offer shared responsibilities, allowing partners to leverage each other’s strengths and expertise. They also provide access to a broader pool of resources and capital, facilitating business growth and expansion. Additionally, partnerships benefit from flexible management structures and simplified regulatory requirements compared to corporations.
• Disadvantages: Despite the benefits, partnerships may face challenges such as shared profits and joint liability for business debts and obligations. Conflicts among partners, differences in management styles , and disagreements over business decisions can hinder productivity and strain relationships. Moreover, partnerships require careful planning and clear communication to ensure alignment of goals and expectations among partners.

For instance, a law firm with multiple partners sharing ownership and management responsibilities exemplifies a partnership structure. In this scenario, lawyers join forces to provide legal services, share overhead costs, and distribute profits based on their respective contributions and performances.

A Joint Hindu Family (JHF) is a traditional Indian business structure where family members collectively manage the business under the Hindu Succession Act. It will be governed by cultural and religious customs, focusing on family values, hierarchy, and lineage.

• Characteristics: In a Joint Hindu Family, business decisions are influenced by familial relationships, traditions, and customs. The eldest male member, known as the Karta , holds authority over business affairs, with other family members serving as coparceners . The structure reflects patriarchal norms, with family cohesion and lineage preservation as primary objectives.
• Legal Structure: Under the Hindu Succession Act, the JHF operates as a unified entity, with collective ownership and management by family members. While the Karta assumes leadership and decision-making responsibilities, other family members have rights to ancestral property and share in business profits and losses.
• Advantages : JHFs benefit from pooling family resources, shared responsibilities, and continuity within the family lineage. They construct a sense of unity and belonging among family members, promoting mutual support and cooperation. Additionally, JHFs offer stability and security, as business ownership remains within the family for generations.
• Disadvantages: Challenges in JHFs may arise due to potential conflicts among family members, differences in opinion, and disputes over inheritance or business management. Limited individual decision-making and complexities in succession planning can impede business growth and innovation. Moreover, changes in family dynamics or external factors may disrupt business operations and jeopardize long-term sustainability.

For instance, a family-owned jewelry business managed by the Joint Hindu Family structure exemplifies this traditional setup. In this scenario, family members collectively oversee business operations, preserve ancestral wealth, and uphold cultural traditions. The karta leads the family business, making strategic decisions in alignment with family values and goals.

A cooperative society is a business owned and operated by a group of individuals working together for mutual benefit. Cooperatives are formed to meet the common needs and aspirations of their members, who share ownership, control, and benefits.

• Characteristics: Cooperatives are characterized by their democratic management structure, where members have equal voting rights and participate in decision-making processes. They prioritize the collective welfare of members over individual profits, fostering a sense of community, solidarity, and shared responsibility.
• Legal Structure: Cooperatives are governed by cooperative laws, which focus on democratic control, shared benefits, and member participation. Members contribute capital to the cooperative and elect a board of directors to oversee its operations. Cooperatives operate based on principles such as voluntary membership, democratic governance, and member education.
• Advantages : Cooperatives offer several advantages, including collective bargaining power, shared resources, and focus on member welfare. By pooling resources and expertise, cooperatives can achieve economies of scale, negotiate favorable terms with suppliers, and provide services that benefit the entire community.
• Disadvantages: However, cooperatives may face challenges such as slow decision-making processes, limited access to capital, and difficulties in member cooperation. Disputes over resource allocation, leadership, and governance may arise, affecting the cooperative’s effectiveness and sustainability.

For instance, a farmer’s cooperative collectively managing agricultural production and marketing exemplifies a cooperative society. Farmers join forces to improve market access, reduce costs, and strengthen their bargaining power, thereby enhancing their economic well-being and community resilience.

A corporation is a legal entity separate from its owners, with shareholders, directors, and officers. Corporations are formed through a formal process of registration with the government, which grants them legal rights and obligations distinct from those of their shareholders .

• Characteristics: Corporations are characterized by their limited liability for shareholders, perpetual existence, and centralized management structure. Shareholders invest capital in the corporation in exchange for ownership shares, which entitle them to a portion of profits and voting rights in corporate decisions.
• Legal Structure: Corporations are governed by corporate laws, which define their structure, rights, and obligations. Shareholders elect a board of directors to oversee the corporation’s affairs and appoint officers to manage day-to-day operations. Corporations issue shares of stock, which represent ownership interests and can be bought, sold, or traded on stock exchanges.
• Advantages : Corporations offer several advantages, including limited liability for shareholders, access to capital markets, and professional management. By separating ownership and management, corporations can attract investors, raise funds for expansion, and recruit skilled professionals to lead the organization.
• Disadvantages: Despite their advantages, corporations also face challenges such as complex legal requirements, double taxation, and potential conflicts between shareholders and management. Compliance with regulatory standards, shareholder activism, and ethical considerations may also pose challenges to corporate governance .

For instance, a multinational corporation like Infosys or Tata Group operating with shareholders, a board of directors, and professional management illustrates a corporation. Shareholders invest capital in the corporation, elect directors to represent their interests, and entrust officers to manage the corporation’s operations and strategic direction.

The organizational plan is vital for any business, offering a strategic framework for ownership structure and operations. Tailored to distinct business types, from manufacturing to retail and services, it assigns roles and responsibilities to ensure efficiency and goal attainment. Whether it’s a sole proprietorship, partnership, Joint Hindu Family, or corporation, each legal structure brings its advantages and challenges, shaping the business’s dynamics. Overall, the organizational plan provides a cohesive roadmap for sustainable growth and success.

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4 Strategies to Guide Your Team Through a Departmental Transition

• Susan Peppercorn
• Tony Martignetti

Start by communicating the “why” clearly and authentically.

Whether initiated by strategic realignment, leadership changes, or market demands, departmental transitions test a leader’s mettle. In this article, the authors offer four strategies to guide your team through a departmental transition while maintaining morale, productivity, and cohesion: 1) Communicate the “why” clearly and authentically. 2) Acknowledge the emotional impact. 3) Cultivate ownership and involvement. 4) Prepare your team for future changes.

Organizational change is constant in an era marked by rapid technological advancements, shifting market dynamics, and the lingering effects of a global pandemic. A survey by McKinsey & Company found that 80% of organizations have experienced some form of transformation in the past five years, yet only a third of these initiatives have been successful.

• Susan Peppercorn  is an executive career transition coach and speaker. She is the author of  Ditch Your Inner Critic at Work: Evidence-Based Strategies  to Thrive in Your Career. Numerous publications including the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Fast Company, the Boston Globe, and SELF Magazine have tapped her for career advice. You can download her free Career Fit Self-Assessment and 25 Steps to a Successful Career Transition .
• TM Tony Martignetti is the chief inspiration officer at Inspired Purpose Partners , where he advises leaders to stay grounded in chaotic times. He is the best-selling author of Climbing the Right Mountain: Navigating the Journey to An Inspired Life and Campfire Lessons for Leaders: How Uncovering Our Past Can Propel Us Forward .

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Employee Onboarding Guide

Onboarding definition & overview.

Last updated: May 15th, 2024

Quality onboarding is crucial for new employees' long-term success and organizational productivity. Learn why a solid employee onboarding process can make a significant impact on employee experience and retention, plus innovative ideas to approaching welcoming new staff.

Onboarding Guide Navigation

> Definition & Overview

What Is Onboarding?

Onboarding is the process of integrating new employees into an organization. It includes the orientation process and opportunities for new hires to learn about the organization's structure, culture, vision, mission and values. Onboarding can span one or two days of activities at some companies; others offer a more extensive series of activities spanning months. 

Onboarding is often confused with orientation. While orientation is necessary for completing paperwork and other routine tasks, onboarding is a comprehensive process involving management and other employees and can last up to 12 months. 

Why Is It Important to Get Onboarding Right?

All new employees are onboarded—but the quality of the onboarding makes a difference. Too often, onboarding consists of handing a new employee a pile of forms and having a supervisor or HR professional walk the employee around the premises, making introductions on an ad hoc basis. When onboarding is done well, however, it lays a foundation for long-term success for the employee and the employer. It can improve productivity, build loyalty and engagement, and help employees become successful early in their careers with the new organization.

A study by  Gallup  showed that while only 12 percent of employees felt their company did a great job with onboarding, those employees were nearly three times as likely to say they have the best possible job. Overall, only 29 percent of new hires felt they were prepared and supported to excel in their new role. This leaves a lot of room for improvement.

Other studies consistently show a positive correlation between engaged employees and a company's profitability, turnover rate, safety record, absenteeism, product quality and customer ratings. An effective onboarding plan offers an ideal opportunity to boost employee engagement by, for example, fostering a supportive relationship between new hires and management, reinforcing the company's commitment to helping employees' professional growth and proving that management recognizes the employees' talent.   For further reading learn  how to optimize the onboarding process  and the importance of good onboarding . 

Relatedly, an  employee value proposition  (EVP) defines the value employees will get from working for a particular organization. It embodies the promises made during recruitment and is lived out every day through company culture. Onboarding gives employees their first look at how an organization's EVP may or may not be realized.

Onboarding Process Summary

While there are many ways to design an onboarding program, some components are integral to the process:

1. Preboarding

Consider inviting new employees to tour the facility, sending informational material, providing care packages, and assigning a buddy to help them integrate before their official start date.

2. Orientation

Introduce employees to the organization's structure, vision, mission, and values; review employee handbook and major policies; complete paperwork; cover administrative procedures; and provide other mandatory training.

3. Foundation Building

Ensure the onboarding process consistently embodies an organization's culture, mission, employee value proposition, brand, and other foundational elements, recognizing that assimilating these values takes time.

4. Mentoring and Buddy Systems

In partnership with hiring managers, enlist mentors or buddies to provide new employees with guidance, assistance, and insights into organizational nuances.

View our full guide on onboarding process steps.

Innovative Approaches to Onboarding

Various components of an onboarding program can be delivered using different approaches and methodologies combined to suit the organization and available resources.

Some employers are using innovative practices, such as games, video, and team-building exercises, to get new hires excited about joining the company. They're also working to make sure people can hit the ground running with functional workstations and equipment. Some examples of this include: 

Facebook has its "45-minute rule," which means all new employees can begin to work within 45 minutes of arriving because all of their systems and devices have been set up before they report for their first day.

Leaders at Suffolk Construction, a national construction firm based in Boston, invite entry-level hires to participate in a variety of team-building exercises, including rowing the Charles River. 

New employees at Bedgear, a Farmingdale, N.Y.-based manufacturer of performance bedding, take a walking tour of downtown Manhattan to visit other retailers that sell customized products, including Warby Parker and Samsung.

View more  original onboarding options, shared from 4 HR leaders . 

Continue Learning About Onboarding

Additional resources:.

• Checklist for Developing Onboarding/New Hire Practices
• New Hire Orientation Checklist
• New-Hire Orientation Process
• New Hire Survey
• New Hire Survey – Remote Employee
• Onboarding Companies and Vendors in the SHRM Vendor Directory  
• SHRM Store resources on  Onboarding

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How to Write a Change of Commission Letter (with Example)

Learn how to draft a change of commission letter that retains clear communication with your reps.

Scott Leese

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Change is constant in business. But when you aren’t transparent about change with your team, rumors can damage morale. That’s especially true when it comes to changes in pay. If you handle this sensitive communication with care, you can keep your top reps from heading for the exit.

If you’re wondering where to start, you’re in the right spot. We’ll walk through what a change of commission letter is and when to use them.

What you’ll learn:

What is a change of commission letter, what to include in a change of commission letter, change of commission letter example, motivate your team with transparent incentive pay.

Discover the power of automating commissions with Salesforce Spiff, and easily create incentive programs that scale.

A change of commission letter is a way for companies to give sales teams written notice about pay changes. Businesses issue a letter to anyone affected when business needs shift and the organization adopts new commission structures . This letter typically includes new plan structures and goals, payout schedules, equity compensation, termination clauses, and more.

When should you use a change of commission letter?

Sales commission plans change to reflect shifting business priorities, unstable market conditions, new product releases, and more. When these changes occur, sales leaders should provide reps with a written letter so they can understand the differences in their new compensation structure and its purpose.

The letter should typically be issued after a new decision is made — when all details are finalized. However, it should not come as a complete surprise to employees. You should plan to verbally communicate major changes with reps before issuing the written letter, so they know it’s coming and do not feel blindsided.

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When your organization decides to change its compensation plan, you must write and issue letters to those affected. Beyond just explaining the new compensation plan, you should also prepare to cover the following components:

• Definitions: Any sales jargon your letter includes should be defined to avoid confusion. Common sales terms include sales activity, quota , earned commission, commission rate, closed deal, etc. If your letter doesn’t spell these terms out, link to resources or provide references your reps can review.
• Commission rate and structure: This is where you’ll define the new plan and its earning potential and incentives for specific sales activities. Include the rep’s base salary so they know how much extra compensation they can expect to earn during the year.
• Goals and quotas: Include performance expectations so reps understand their targets. Clarity regarding metrics is crucial, especially if they’ve changed.
• Start date and payout schedule: Be transparent in your letter about when the new plan will start. Make the payout schedule clear and easy for reps to understand so they know when they can expect to be paid.
• Floors and clawbacks : Some plans do not pay out until a threshold, or floor, is met. For example, if the floor is 50% of the goal, a rep is not paid until they meet that percentage. A clawback, on the other hand, refers to money already paid out that must be returned, sometimes with a penalty. Be sure to include what happens to money already paid out if a deal is canceled and a clawback is requested.
• Equity compensation: If the plan includes alternative forms of compensation — non-cash pay — detail the types, amounts, and performance criteria for earning. This might include stock options or performance shares.
• Termination or resignation clause: Be sure to explain all commission plan details applicable to reps who resign or are terminated.
• Additional resources: If reps have questions about their plan, make it easy for them to find the answer on their own. Give them access to official process documents and resource links, so they have everything they need in one place.
• Signatures: To make the letter an official and legally binding document, both parties — employer and employee — must sign it, so be sure to include a space for this.

Considerations when issuing change of commission letters

Letters are a necessary part of business operations for any sales organization. But when you make big changes — especially when they affect compensation — it’s important to address them with your sales team before you send a letter.

Because it can alter a sales rep’s strategy and affect compensation, organizations should aim to change plans as little and rarely as possible. Frequent changes can affect workflow, productivity, and employee morale. In my experience, the most often you should change a plan is once a year.

Taking the time to explain the new plan and reasons for the change helps organizations reduce the chances of sales reps leaving due to the new compensation structure. For example, you might explain that although your organization previously paid X amount, it’s no longer sustainable because the company needs more capital for a new product. Be sure to emphasize the positives, such as a new product or feature that lets sales representatives compete for bigger deals that pay more.

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Companies with straightforward compensation plans should use a basic letter format to make it easy for reps to understand. However, if you need to include complex details, you should provide clear explanations. There’s no one-size-fits-all for writing a letter, but a basic version might look something like this.

Example template

Dear [Salesperson’s name],

This letter is to inform you of changes to your compensation plan. The new plan will become effective on January 1, 2024.

[Give some context here about the reason for the change and new business goals. If it’s a lot of information, you may consider sending out a separate letter at the same time].

As a [sales representative] at [name of company], your compensation is based on these requirements [include role description or link to additional resources or performance metrics]. In addition to the expectations of your role, please be sure to read all applicable definitions related to your job [link to resource] to ensure comprehension before signing this document. If you have any questions, please reach out to your manager.

Here is a breakdown of your new commission plan:

• Base Salary : $100,000/year
• Quota : 10 qualified opportunities + $60,000 of revenue per month
• Commission structure: $100 per qualified opportunity and 1.66% of all deals generated
• On-target earnings (OTE) : $124,000/year
• On-target variable : $24,000/year
• Pay period: All deals closed will be paid in the following quarter. For more details on commission processing, refer to this document [include link].
• Equity compensation: Stock option equal to 1 for every $1,000 over quota
• End of employment terms: If you are terminated or resign from your position, all sales commissions will be paid during the following quarter as scheduled. Refer to the Sales Team Handbook [include link] for details on closing your accounts and receiving your last paycheck.

I acknowledge that I have read this document, understand its contents, and agree to its terms.

Employee Signature: _____________________ Date: ______________

Supervisor Signature: _____________________ Date: ______________

Use change of commission letters to improve clarity in your sales organization

It’s sometimes crucial for the health of your organization to change its compensation plans based on business priorities, financial goals, market conditions, and more. It’s equally important to be transparent and communicative about adjusting compensation structures with your teams. By writing a clear change of commission letter and taking the time to explain new goals, you create an opportunity to build a stronger relationship with your employees and strengthen your business at the same time.

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Scott Leese is the founder of Scott Leese Consulting. Armed with years of industry experience - and a proven track record of success - he focuses on a scalable approach to sales strategies, processes, people, and infrastructure. Scott is also a co-founder of Surf and Sales, a sales summit held in ... Read More Costa Rica. He an author and a 3X American Association of Inside Sales Professionals Top 25 Award Winner.

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IT Services

How to build a scalable IT budget

How much business could your business do without IT?

These days, “none” is far and away the most common answer.

Yet many organizations struggle with how to approach spending and budgeting related to IT. Information technology may be the backbone of a business, but it usually isn’t front and center in strategic discussions and high-level decision-making. And whatever spending is happening, the budgeting process underneath it often doesn’t scale well.

We know that IT budgets are growing: 57% of CIOs expected their IT budgets to increase last year. An effective IT budget is about more than just spending more money. It’s about spending that money wisely — and determining how much money should be spent on IT in the first place.

How often should an IT budget be evaluated?  

Many organizations with established IT budgeting procedures evaluate that budget yearly. 

Why yearly? Because the process can be lengthy, involving numerous stakeholders and significant amounts of documentation. And the larger your organization, the more complex this business process gets. It’s not uncommon for the evaluation process to take months, so it’s impractical to shorten the budget lifecycle.

For IT services firms supporting clients in the IT budget evaluation and creation process, a yearly cycle can prevent overburdening your team and allow you to stagger clients throughout the calendar year.

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Who should be involved in the process?   

Keeping the right stakeholders involved in the IT budgeting process helps ensure that the budget is holistic (covering everything necessary), realistic (within the company’s overall financial means), and well-managed (administered and allocated responsibly).

The personnel involved should include any of the following, where they exist:

Chief information officer (CIO)

Chief financial officer (CFO)

IT managers, IT directors, IT department heads

IT project managers and project leads

Representatives from major divisions/departments

If the organization has a project management office (PMO), that group should also play a role.

It’s worth noting that entities outside the CIO and IT domains play an increasing role in IT budgeting as the process gets democratized across lines of business. Teodora Siman, an IDC research manager , elaborates:

“We’re seeing more influence come from outside of IT, where the CIO orchestrates technology across the business, and [technology decisions] are a collaborative conversation with business leaders who are focused on outcomes and customer-centricity.”

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• Key items to include in an IT budget

Organizations differ in where certain expenses fall in the budget, but most IT budgets should include at least these five areas:

Physical employee equipment: IT money is used to purchase laptops, desktops, printers, phones, networking equipment, servers, and other hardware.

Staff salaries: Employees within the IT department or division are typically paid out of the IT budget

Cybersecurity, backup, and disaster recovery (DR): Preventive expenditures here help to hedge against disasters, natural or otherwise.

Infrastructure and maintenance: Money is allocated to repair and upgrade devices and infrastructure and to pay for ongoing IT infrastructure operational costs (internet access, cloud services, software licenses, etc.).

IT project management: IT project management costs that are not accounted for in your overall project management budget should appear here.

How to plan a budget that serves the future of the organization  

Planning an IT budget can be relatively simple for a startup or small professional services firm, a massive months-long process at an enterprise level, or anywhere in between.

Whatever the size and scope of your IT budget planning, we’ve boiled the process down to six key elements. Below, we’ll provide clear, concise planning tips to help you create an IT budget to propel your organization forward.

Assess the current landscape (internal and external)

One key strategy for planning is considering the context around your IT budget. Is business booming? Is your industry more broadly in flux? Are you growing (and if so, how quickly)? Or is this a year where it’s clear the purse strings need to tighten?

And what about the technology landscape? We aren’t necessarily seeing quantum leaps in computing power at the individual user or device level. But consider the capabilities of AI and machine learning to churn through data or for generative AI to enhance workflows and extend human capacity.

Any successful IT budget needs to be grounded in these realities. They inform how much is likely to be available and what sorts of changes that budget needs to accommodate.

Integrate business objectives and cross-department goals

Next, remember that your IT budget isn’t an island or a destination. It’s a way to achieve goals and objectives. So make sure your budget doesn’t live in a silo. Instead, it should be built atop existing business objectives and priorities. 

Including business objectives and cross-departmental goals in budget planning ensures that your IT division is growing with, not against, the broader organization. By building your IT budget around the business’s core objectives, you can avoid unnecessary spending on IT projects that don’t further the mission.

This improves the organization’s financial health, affects employee morale and effectiveness, and can even advance market competitiveness. 

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Set clear guidelines for expense categories

One principle is consistent for any kind of budgeting: the more clarity, the better.

It’d be preposterous to lump your entire IT budget into a single line item: you need to know where the money’s going more specifically than that. But true clarity requires more than a few vague expense categories. You’ll need to get as specific as possible and set clear guidelines with team members on what expenses go where.

With clearer and more numerous expense categories, it will be easier to understand IT spend after the fact, helping you create progressively more accurate IT budgets year after year.

Consider flexible purchase options

IT costs can be inconsistent and spiky: it’s easy enough to plan for an upgrade cycle on PCs for your workforce, but the cost of replacing a server is a different beast. Big technology investments are sometimes needed, and the larger your organization scales, the more unwieldy these IT expenditures can become.

So, as you plan your IT budget, consider flexible purchasing options for your IT investments, including fair market value leases, consumption-based billing, and installment payment agreements.

This is one reason so many organizations are turning to the cloud: procuring your computing and software needs from a cloud provider tends to flatten out these spikes. Managed IT service providers can provide a similar cost-leveling function, and in the right situations, this business model can deliver notable cost savings alongside better IT support and the broad expertise needed to meet diverse IT needs.

Use KPIs to monitor effectiveness

Next, make sure to track the effectiveness of your IT budget processes by tracking the right metrics. Key performance indicators (KPIs) can help here, but the trick is finding the KPIs that deliver the right information in the right way.

For example, IT project team efficiency , on-time project completion percentage, average hardware age, software utilization rate, and a few dozen other measures could all be helpful — but not all are helpful all the time. 

Which KPIs are right for monitoring budget effectiveness depends on what your business is trying to achieve. Cost savings, increased efficiency, greater accuracy, and better customer responsiveness are all fantastic priorities, but they may compete against one another in some ways. 

So first, you must establish which priorities take precedence. Only then can you select the KPIs to help you measure progress on those priorities. 

Educate stakeholders about IT spending

Last, make sure you continually educate stakeholders in the IT budget about how spending works in IT. You’ll be working with people across a spectrum of specialties and skill sets, and not everyone will be a financial or IT expert. 

It’s up to you to invest in these stakeholders. By teaching them about the mechanisms for IT spending (such as those flexible purchase options), your budgetary goals, and the tools you’ll use to measure success, you’ll garner better support and get more useful feedback.

Manage your IT projects and budgets effectively with Teamwork.com 

For a successful overall IT strategy, businesses and IT leaders must prioritize the IT initiatives that best fit a company’s business goals and strategic needs — while staying within appropriate levels of IT spending.

Because while digital transformation is key to continued growth, it’s neither easy nor inexpensive.

For most professional services firms, managing IT projects and budgets well requires understanding and adhering to the business’s strategic plan and creating a technology roadmap that supports the overall business strategy. It also demands the ability to plan, visualize, strategize, organize, and ultimately execute projects well.

Teamwork.com is project management software that’s perfect for IT project management — including IT budgeting projects.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

• How often should an IT budget be evaluated?
• Who should be involved in the process?
• How to plan a budget that serves the future of the organization

Ben is a Senior Content Marketing Specialist at Teamwork.com. Having held content roles at agencies and SaaS companies for the past 8 years, Ben loves writing about the latest tech trends and work hacks in the agency space.

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