Insights / Checklist / Corporate strategy and long-term goals
ChecklistTen questions to ask before approving a long-term plan
Before a plan reaches the board, ten short questions can expose weak spots in the problem, the resources, the risks and the exit signals while they are cheap to fix.
Long-term plans usually reach the board polished and persuasive. By then, a great deal of work has gone into them, the sponsors are committed, and the room for hard questions has narrowed. Weaknesses that could have been fixed cheaply at the draft stage become expensive problems in year two.
A short set of questions, asked before a plan is finalised, can expose those weak spots early. The ten below are grouped into four themes. Use them in steering meetings, investment committees or board pre-reads. A strong plan will answer each one plainly. Hesitation or vagueness tells you where to look harder.
Is the problem clear?
Plans often describe activity in detail while leaving the underlying problem fuzzy. Start here, because every later answer depends on it.
- 1. Can the plan state in two sentences what changes for customers and why now? If not, keep working on the problem before approving the solution.
- 2. What evidence shows the problem is real and significant: customer data, financial trends, operational measures or market shifts?
- 3. What happens if we do nothing? A credible plan describes the cost of inaction, not just the benefits of action.
Consider a typical plan to open a new distribution centre. If the sponsors describe the building, the equipment and the timeline in detail but cannot say in plain terms which customers will receive faster or cheaper deliveries, the problem has not been defined. The building may still be the right answer, but nobody can yet tell.
Are resources committed?
A plan that needs people and budget that nobody has agreed is a hope. Many plans assume that capable staff will somehow find time alongside their existing roles, or that funding will appear in next year’s budget.
- 4. Who gives up what to fund it? Name the budgets, projects or headcount that will move.
- 5. Are the key people named, and have their managers agreed to release them for the time the plan assumes?
- 6. Who is the single accountable owner, and do they have the authority to make trade-offs without returning to the board each time?
The answer to the fifth question is often the most revealing. If the plan depends on the same handful of senior people who are already leading three other initiatives, the real constraint is not money but attention. Better to sequence the work than to approve everything at once and watch it all slow down.
Are the assumptions tested?
Every long-term plan rests on assumptions about demand, prices, costs, timing and the behaviour of customers and competitors. The danger is not that assumptions exist but that nobody has identified which ones matter most.
- 7. Which three assumptions, if wrong, would most change the outcome? How confident are we in each, and how could we test them cheaply in the first few months?
- 8. What does the plan look like if costs run a quarter higher and benefits arrive a year later? Is it still worth doing?
The second question is not pessimism. Large programmes frequently take longer and cost more than planned. A plan that only works under its central case is fragile, and the board should know that before approving it.
What would make us stop?
Agree the signals that would change the plan. Doing so early prevents slow, expensive drift, where a programme continues long after the evidence has turned against it because nobody wants to be the person who calls a halt.
- 9. What measurable signals, by what dates, would lead us to change direction or stop? Who reviews them?
- 10. What are the first ninety days, and what will we know at the end of them that we do not know now?
Write the stop signals down
Record the agreed stop and change signals in the approval paper itself. When the review date arrives, the conversation starts from a shared commitment rather than from whoever argues most persuasively in the room.
How to use the checklist
Share the ten questions with plan sponsors well before the approval meeting, so they can strengthen the plan rather than defend it on the spot. Ask for a short written answer to each, no more than a paragraph.
In the meeting, focus discussion on the two or three questions with the weakest answers. A plan does not need perfect answers to all ten to be approved, but the board should approve it knowing where the gaps are, with actions and dates to close them.
Finally, revisit the same ten questions at the first major review. Comparing the answers then with the answers at approval is one of the fastest ways to see whether a plan is on track or quietly drifting.
Source: Intelliversal analysis.
