Chapter 21: Print and Publish

So you're about ready to print your plan. Assemble your topics as indicated in the outline in Fundamentals: Pick Your Plan. Browse through the sample plans at the end of this book to get a better sense of the topic sequence. Throughout this book, we have discussed portions of the plan in the order that you work on it, not in the final order it will print.

Please make sure to run it through a final critical edit. Then make sure to publish it so that commitments made by managers are clearly known and acknowledged. Also make it clear that you will be tracking results, comparing your actual results to the planned results, and discussing the difference.

Publishing = Management

Don't forget the process of publishing within your own company. In this case, publishing means distributing the plan where all the managers can see it. People who make commitments as part of the plan need to see those commitments on record. They need to know that the plan will be tracked and that the difference between planned and actual results will be calculated and discussed.

Final Edit

Always run a business plan through a final edit. Have you run your spell check software? Have you read it over again? Do you have some friends who can read it for you? Sometimes you don't see the errors that others would see because you are too close to it.

Check the numbers in your charts and tables. Make sure they match each other, and go back and check the references to numbers in the text. People often change numbers after writing objectives, which results in conflicting information. For example, your objectives text might set sales objectives of $500,000, but your plan tables show sales projections of $400,000.

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