Tag Archives: Business plan

Take Care: Now’s The Time For A CMD (Crisis Management Dozen) Plan

Posted on by

I don’t know of a single event in my lifetime that has had the world gripped in fear and was not as a result of the actions of one country or person.

Countries, businesses, and families have been affected.

Some people will wallow in the constant changing events or numbers of lives lost.

Some people will heed advice of doomsayer’s and continue to stock up unnecessarily on toilet paper.

Some people will sit back and see what happens.

What about you? The business owner? The solopreneur? You are not helpless in this situation!

I have long professed the use of the “CMD” Plan; also known as the Crisis Management Dozen Plan. I have modified it slightly based on current events.

Let me explain……

It is all centered around “Taking Care”. Taking care of what’s most important:

1.      Care of Yourself and Your Family

2.      Care of Your Business

3.      Care of Your People

Each of these, has 4 components that each of us could, and should, focus on during any time of crisis.

1.      Care of Yourself and Family

Very easily put, you are no use to yourself or anyone else unless you start by focusing on yourself. You do this by starting with 4 very simple, yet important steps:

A.    Assure your safety and that of your family. Make sure that you and your family are healthy and safe and take the necessary precautions to assure that this continues. Keep yourself and family insulated (I prefer to use this word rather than isolate) from harm by assuring you have a safe place to call “home”. This includes assuring you have the necessary amount of food, supplies, medication, etc. to make it through the period of time that you may need to be sheltered and “insulated”.

B.      Make prudent financial decisions. During times of crisis, financial instability abounds. It may not be the right time to buy that new car or book a vacation. Your source of income could be jeopardized and may need to put your “rainy-day fund” in play.

C.      Keep calm and poised. You cannot change the actions or behaviors of others; you can only control your own. If you have a family, you may be setting the tone for others’ actions. Be mindful of what you do and say.

D.      Keep growing. If you need to work remotely, or you happen to have a reduced workload or even lose your job. Never stop learning and growing. Use technology to your advantage. There are many FREE websites and sources for education and training. LinkedIn offers free training and development courses. Use this time to positively focus your energies on activities that move you forward.

2.      Care of Your Business:

Once you have assured the safety and health of you and your family, you can turn your attention to that of your business.

A.      Business Continuity. All businesses should have a business continuity plan. What happens if you experienced a blizzard? A hurricane? An earthquake? A system-wide computer virus? Will you continue to operate? If so, how and where? When world events like we are experiencing now, when we are being asked to assure social distancing, working in a normal business center may not be acceptable, but you need to continue operating your business. How do you do it? You can start now if you don’t already have a plan.

B.      Current Financial Review. Current world events of business environment conditions may warrant an in-depth look at your short-term financial stability. Has your business suffered revenue loss? Can you make payroll this month? Will you need to cut expenses and/or staff? If so, when and how much?

C.      Business Plan Review. When is the last time you looked at your business plan? I’m not talking about your annual plan or a review of your P&L statement, I’m talking about your strategic plan. If during times of crisis, your business is slowed, take the opportunity to brush the cobwebs off your (strategic) business plan. Are you where you wanted to be (under normal business conditions)? Do you need to adjust your plan or consider alternative strategies? Now is the time.

D.      People Strategy Review. Those that know me know I preach about the need for a people strategy. Now is the time to review that strategy as well. Start with a review of your succession plan. Depending upon the severity of the world events, and the possible turnover of employees, you need to assure you have the right people, in the right jobs, at the right time, for the right reasons.

3.      Care of Your People:

Once you have looked at the business, you need to look at your people; the heartbeat of your business.

A.      Assure the Safety of Your Employees. If your business has employees that are in a brick and mortar facility, you need to assure the safety of your employees, customers and visitors under any circumstances. Under current events, if your business is still operating and not shut down, this means you need to assure that you take the necessary precautions of social distancing, extraordinary cleanliness procedures and perhaps even providing masks and/or hand sanitizers.

B.      Use Virtual Offices or Work from Home Provisions. Whether your business has a formal telecommuting or work from home policy or not, you should consider the implementation of such programs to minimize the potential for spreading of any contagious conditions.

C.      Support the Needs of Your Employees and Their Families. Employees with school-age children may be faced with the reality that they need to be home with their children as a result of school closures. The employee themself, or their family member, may be sick or contagious. Support, where possible the work from home provision. If the employee is a production worker or someone that needs to be in the workplace, perhaps there are on-line training courses that this individual can benefit from while completing from home.

D.      Communicate. Communicate. Communicate. In times of chaos, people (employees) are begging for information. Over the past week or so, I have received no less than 3 dozen emails from CEO’s of banks, financial institutions, public services, etc. explaining what they are doing to assure the safety of their customers, their employees and of their families. While they may all have similar messages, they all felt the need and importance for communicating to their customers. As a business owner, you need to assure ongoing communication with employees; whether you are open or closed! Ongoing communications to keep your employees abreast of the business, as well as to reinforce calm and a showing of support for all your employees is not optional, but mandatory during these unsettling times.

As I indicated earlier, I have modified the CMD Plan based upon current events. However, the basis for the CMD Plan are important and critical during any emergency situation.

For more information on our CMD Plan or any component within this article, please contact Randy Lumia, President and People Strategy Lead at Paradise Workplace Solutions, LLC. at Randy.Lumia@ParadiseWorkplaceSolutions.com

Part 2: How to Build Your Company’s Succession Plan–The Succession Planning Business Model

Posted on by

When considering a succession plan for your business, there are a number of steps you can take to ensure you have a solid, well thought out plan.  I’ve broken the steps into a 3-part series and included links to connect you with more information. In Part 1 of this series, we discussed the importance of Succession Planning and the 9-Block People Matrix. Today, we will be discussing the second component of the Succession Planning Process: The Succession Planning Business Model.

Succession Planning (or Future Desired State) Business Model:

The Succession Planning Business Model starts with the use of the company’s existing organizational chart that includes all current positions in a cascading fashion.

The Succession Planning Business Model, a modified organization chart, is used to identify candidates for critical positions within the organization. The model usually starts with the top positions in the organization and removes the existing subordinates for those positions and functions. It is done in two steps.

Step 1:  Identify all critical positions and assess incumbents

Identify all critical positions within the organization and remove the subordinate relationships that are not critical to your business. This is done for as many levels as is needed to capture each of those critical positions within the company. Critical positions can range from the President down to a highly skilled specialized individual contributor.  Don’t make the mistake of focusing on the high-level positions only.

Then, assess these three critical data points for each incumbent:

  1. succession plan rating from the 9-Block People Matrix. The Matrix is used to plot an employee’s present-day performance with his/her potential.
  2. the incumbent employee’s current performance rating, and
  3. the likely timing associated with the incumbent’s next move.

Once you have your assessments put together, superimpose them on your Succession Planning Organization Chart (Figure 1).

Figure 1. The incumbents’ data alongside the critical positions chart

Not everyone in a leadership role is a “superstar” as indicated with the VP of Technology in Figure 2, where the incumbent is identified as a Talent Risk / Blocker. This employee is most likely going to be placed on a performance improvement plan and could be transitioned from the organization if performance doesn’t improve.

Step 2: Compile a list and assess potential successors for each position

Create a three-column table for those critical positions. These columns will include

1. name of successor candidates,

2. current succession plan rating from the 9-Block People Matrix for each candidate, and

3. candidate’s readiness level for the move into that position.

This data table is then positioned on the Succession Planning Business Model (Figure 2).

Figure 2.   Potential successors placed on the critical positions’ organization chart

You’ll notice not every position has an immediate backfill for the role (see examples where an external hire is needed in Figure 2). In these cases, the next likely candidate for the role may be an external hire. External hires should be the highest priority need for the department head, Human Resources and the organization’s management team.

An important note:  The Succession Planning Business Model also does not need to reflect a current organization, rather it can be a representation of a future state for which the company may be transitioning towards.

Process considerations

  • Like with the use of the 9-Block People Matrix, the Succession Planning Business Model is usually completed by a department head for the group that is being evaluated and matched against an existing Succession Planning Business Model.
  • Like performance goals and performance reviews, the succession planning documents change from year to year. Some employees may have been promoted within the year, some may have completed stretch assignments, and still others may have retired or left the company. As such, the succession planning process needs to be treated like any other critical people-related process that gets reviewed annually.
  • It is important to highlight that all discussions regarding succession planning need to remain confidential as with any other company-sensitive material.
  • Finally, all discussions regarding succession planning should be facilitated by a bias-neutral individual in order to detect alternate sides of situations or opportunities. It is for this reason that many companies engage the assistance of an outside facilitator to conduct and manage these meetings.

Coming up:  Individual Succession Plan Profile

The last part of this series used in the Succession Planning process is the Individual Succession Plan Profile and will be discussed in the next post.

If you would like for me to email you this three-part series or if you have questions with any of the three Succession Planning Processes; the 9-Block People Matrix, the use of the Succession Planning Business Model, or the Individual Succession Plan Profiles, please contact me at Paradise Workplace Solutions.

Paradise Workplace Solutions, LLC works with business owners to improve productivity and profitable growth by aligning people strategies to the company’s business plan.

What the heck is a “People Schematic”?

Posted on by

Many business owners aren’t in a position to hire full-time human resource expertise and your business may not need it, yet.  But you do need a people strategy to be confident you’re evolving the structure of your business and hiring at the right time.  That’s why we’d like to share a concept that HR experts use with leaders to diagram business needs and milestones with future employee requirements–the People Schematic.

People schematic defined

The people schematic is the first part of a successful people strategy that also includes a People Plan and People Metrics.  Just like a successful people strategy, the schematic helps to assure that a business has the right people, in the right jobs, at the right time, for the right reasons. Also like the people strategy, a people schematic is a living, developing diagram that gets reviewed regularly alongside the people strategy and the company’s business plan.

The people schematic is one element of a broader strategic workforce planning process.

Components of a people schematic

The people schematic uses information from the business plan that includes

  • the current state (number and types of employees vs. the business plan)
  • the desired future state (number and types of employees vs. the business plan)
  • business markers that indicate when key actions need to be taken.

The schematic is the plan used to close the gap between the current and desired future state.  For those familiar with the traditional human resources lingo, this could be considered an extension or means to the development of a headcount or recruiting plan.

The people schematic is a graphed representation that shows the number and type of employees that will be needed over time against the business metrics that are used. The business metrics are different for each business. It could be the number of widgets necessary to be produced or the revenue needed to be generated. The metric could be the number of patients that need to be reached. It could be anything that the business deems to be its goal. However, two things are consistent regardless of the company’s product or service: the companies financials linked to the business plan, and the use of any and all metrics that measure key human resource information, such as turnover, time-to-hire, etc. The key point is that the schematic uses information derived from the business plan.

Drawbacks of not creating a people schematic

Is your business at risk if you don’t have a people strategy?  Maybe not…initially.  But it can catch up to you.

  • Under-hiring can lead to excessive workloads on current staff, missing customer deadlines, and the inability to react to business needs or changes.
  • Over-hiring can lead to financial stresses on the company, inefficiencies of the workforce, or put the organization in jeopardy that could result in layoffs or staff reductions.
  • Not having the right people ready for the position at the right time for the business.

“Just-in-time” hiring is not easy and takes diligence. Factors such as manager input, recruiting ‘lead-time’, employee turnover and ‘lost time or opportunity’ need to be considered.

Evolve your people schematic along with your business

Naturally, as the business advances or encounters difficulties, you need to modify the people schematic and business plan.  Actively review both documents regularly at the leadership level.  Also critical is that your managers understand both plans because they hold knowledge and experience of your business that is critical to implementing an accurate business plan.

Important to note:  Before determining your demand for external talent, identify gaps in skills and capabilities in your current workforce. Fill these gaps through internal mobility and ‘upskilling’ first. We’ll cover these topics as part of the People Plan in an upcoming blog.

Contact us if you have questions on a People Schematic.

Paradise Workplace Solutions, LLC works with business owners to improve productivity and profitable growth by aligning people strategies to the company’s business plan.