One-page strategic plan: summarise your strategy so the whole team can retell it
If your strategy does not fit on one page, you have not chosen yet.
In this topic: Put it in writing and apply 4
If it does not fit on one page, you have not chosen yet
The choices from your strategy process on a single page that everyone in the business can read, retell and use.
A one-page strategic plan summarises what you have decided: where you will compete, how you will win and what you will stop doing. It does not replace the analysis behind those choices, and it does not replace a business plan for a bank or investor. It is the page people look at when they have to make a decision on Tuesday afternoon without calling a meeting.
David Collis and Michael Rukstad opened their article on strategy statements with a blunt question: can you summarise your company's strategy in 35 words or fewer (source: Harvard Business Review, April 2008)? Their answer was that a good statement names three things: the objective, the scope (the customers, offering and region you serve) and the advantage that makes customers choose you. A strategy that cannot be said briefly is hard to pass on, and a strategy that is not passed on is not carried out.
What goes into a one-page strategic plan?
The page has ten building blocks. Each comes from a well-known strategy thinker, so you are not inventing a format; you are combining tested questions.
| Building block | Question it answers | Origin |
|---|---|---|
| Strategy in one sentence | What is our objective, where do we compete and what is our advantage? | Collis and Rukstad |
| Diagnosis | What is the real challenge we face? | Rumelt |
| Winning aspiration | What are we trying to achieve? | Lafley and Martin |
| Where to play | Which customers, regions, products and channels? | Lafley and Martin |
| How to win | Why will those customers choose us over the alternatives? | Lafley and Martin |
| What we will not do | Which customers, products and work do we turn down? | Porter |
| Capabilities and systems | What must we be good at, and which systems support it? | Lafley and Martin |
| Goals | Which three to five measures tell us we are on track? | Common practice |
| Initiatives | Which coordinated actions, each with an owner and a date? | Rumelt |
| Assumptions and signals | What must be true, and what would make us review the plan? | Basis for review |
Richard Rumelt calls the core of good strategy a kernel of three parts: a diagnosis of the challenge, a guiding policy for dealing with it and coherent actions that support each other. A. G. Lafley and Roger Martin describe strategy as a cascade of five linked choices, from winning aspiration through where to play and how to win to the capabilities and management systems that make it work. Martin advises moving back and forth between the five until they fit and reinforce one another. Michael Porter adds the line most plans leave out: the essence of strategy is choosing what not to do.
One-page strategic plan example: a machining firm
A contract machining firm with 40 staff makes metal and plastic parts to order. Most of its work comes from one-off jobs for general engineering customers, and margins swing with every quote. After a strategy process along the five steps, the management team chose to specialise. This is their page.
Strategy on one page: contract machining firm, 40 staff
- Strategy in one sentence: within four years, we will be the regional machining partner for medical-device and laboratory-equipment makers that need small, certified and fully traceable batches, delivered within ten working days.
- Diagnosis: jobbing work for general engineering brings volatile volumes and is quoted on price through online platforms. Medical and laboratory customers pay for traceability and reliability, but buy only from certified suppliers. Our constraint is certification and skilled machinists, not demand.
- Winning aspiration: half of revenue from repeat contracts with medical and laboratory customers within four years, up from a fifth today.
- Where to play: medical-device and laboratory-equipment makers within half a day's drive; batches of 10 to 500 parts in metals and medical-grade plastics.
- How to win: a certified quality system with traceability for every part, delivery within ten working days on repeat orders, and engineers who help customers design parts that are easier to make.
- What we will not do: no production runs above 5,000 parts, no bidding through online quoting platforms, no new automotive customers.
- Capabilities and systems: medical-grade quality certification, scheduling that reserves capacity for repeat orders, in-house training for machinists, and a monthly review of contract revenue, on-time delivery and scrap.
- Goals: contract share of revenue from 20% to 50%; on-time delivery of at least 95%; scrap below 2% of material cost; six machinists in training.
- Initiatives: achieve certification (quality manager, within 12 months); sign five framework agreements (commercial director, within 18 months); start a training programme for six machinists (operations manager, first quarter); phase out automotive work as contracts expire (managing director).
- Assumptions and signals: device makers keep moving work to nearby suppliers, the first certification audit is passed and new machinists can be trained in-house within a year. Review the plan if the audit slips by more than six months, two framework talks fail or staff turnover rises.
Fictitious Firmfocus example.
The aspiration is only useful if it adds up. Here is the arithmetic behind it.
| Today | Year four | |
|---|---|---|
| Total revenue | €5,000,000 | €6,000,000 |
| Share from medical and laboratory contracts | 20% | 50% |
| Revenue from those contracts | €1,000,000 | €3,000,000 |
| Revenue from other work | €4,000,000 | €3,000,000 |
Fictitious Firmfocus example. Amounts in euro; the logic works in any currency.
Contract revenue has to grow by €2,000,000. If an average framework agreement is worth €400,000 a year, that takes five agreements, which is exactly the second initiative. Other work falls by €1,000,000, the room created by phasing out automotive jobs. If the team had written "grow in medical" without these numbers, nobody would know whether five agreements, or fifteen, were needed.
Small business vs larger organisation
Small business
One page for the whole business is enough. The owner drafts it with two or three key people, and it hangs where the team meets. Keep the initiatives to three or four: in a small firm the same people run the daily work, so every extra project slows the rest.
Larger organisation
Write one page for the group and one for each business unit, and make them refer to each other: the group page sets the portfolio and the capital allocation, each unit page sets where and how that unit wins. A strategy map from the Balanced Scorecard can show how the unit goals add up. In listed companies the board has a formal role in strategy, as described in strategic planning in large organisations.
How to use the page
- In decisions: test a large quote, an investment or a hire against "where to play" and "what we will not do" before you say yes.
- In meetings: put the goals and initiatives on the agenda once a quarter, with each owner reporting progress.
- When people join: give new employees the page in their first week, so they know which work comes first.
- With lenders and advisers: show the page next to your business plan; it proves that the forecast follows from choices.
Common mistakes in a one-page strategic plan
- Goals without choices: "grow revenue by a third" is a target, not a strategy. Rumelt lists mistaking goals for strategy as one of the hallmarks of bad strategy.
- Too many initiatives: twelve priorities mean none. If an initiative has no owner and no date, drop it or merge it.
- Vague language: "customer intimacy" or "operational excellence" without a concrete mechanism says nothing. Write what a customer would notice.
- No "not doing" line: without it, every opportunity looks like a good idea and the old work never stops.
- No review signals: a plan without assumptions cannot tell you when it has stopped being true.
The page sits between the choice and the execution. Before you write it, finish step 5: choose and implement and frame it with your mission, vision and values. After it, translate the goals into OKRs or a scorecard. This article is part of Put your strategy in writing in the Strategy theme.
What should a one-page strategic plan include?
Does a one-page plan replace the business plan?
How often should I update a one-page strategic plan?
Sources
- Harvard Business Review: David J. Collis and Michael G. Rukstad, Can You Say What Your Strategy Is? (April 2008)
- McKinsey Quarterly: Richard Rumelt, The perils of bad strategy (June 2011)
- A. G. Lafley and Roger L. Martin: Playing to Win, How Strategy Really Works, Harvard Business Review Press (2013)
- Roger L. Martin: Decoding the Strategy Choice Cascade (February 2023)
- Harvard Business Review: Michael E. Porter, What Is Strategy? (November-December 1996)
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