This document provides guidance on creating an effective business plan with 3 key areas: effective management, quality control and outputs, and staff happiness and productivity. It discusses each area in 1-2 sentences. Effective management ensures quality control and outputs are managed effectively through areas like staff incentives. Quality control ensures the business meets requirements through checks on work. Running costs like utilities and supplies can be reviewed to save money. Small perks and staff feedback help keep employees happy and productive. An effective plan can improve profits by focusing on these areas.

1. A guide on a few basics

2.  Introductory note
 Diagram- Business planning: areas for adjusting for effectiveness
 Business planning for effectiveness:
 Effective Management
a. Quality control and outputs
b. Day to day running costs
c. Staff happiness & productivity
 Source list

3. This guide is put together by a member of the public and intended
to serve as a simple guide and not as an official set of protocols.

4. Effective Business
plan
to ensure:
1. Effective
management
to ensure effective:
4. Staff
2. Quality control & 3. Day to day
outputs running costs Happiness &
productivity
a more effective business

5. Whether you are setting up a new business or revising an old one, it is important
to consider areas where you can be more effective in your business plan. These areas could be:
1. Management: how can management ensure more effectiveness through their role? Through
this you can ensure that other areas of your business are managed more effectively such as:
a. Quality control & outputs: how can quality help you to be more effective? How can
outputs be reconsidered in production costs such as: Time spent on output? Cost price spent on
output? Labour needed for output as a whole?
b. Day to day running costs: how can changing service providers, reviewing utilities set-
ups and other day to day essentials needed for your business be reviewed or considered for
making your business more effective?
c. Staff happiness and productivity: how can staff be encouraged to produce better
outputs? What sort of incentives are likely to make them more effective?
By considering how you could be more effective in these areas or setting up different trials on
how to go about implementing change for effectiveness, your business can be nurtured and
adjusted to be more effective rather than just be a business that simply runs day to day with no
real adjustments in effectiveness and therefore profit margins.
Effective business planning can save you time, money and help your business make more for
less.

6. Effective management is the most important area to focus on when trying to make a business
more effective. According to Margaret Francis, [MSW, M.Phil, PGDCIM] on ‘Changing Minds’
Here are some things to keep note of to ensure effective management; an effective manager
should have:
 Creative Problem Solving Skills:
1. Describing and analysing a problem
2. Identifying causes of a problem
3. Developing creative options and
choosing the best course of action,
4. Implementing and evaluating effective
and efficiency of the decision.
 Communication Skills:
1. Listening skills
2. Presentation skills
3. Feedback Skills
4. Report writing skills.
Image by:
John Drake Flickr

7.  Conflict Management Skills:
1. Identifying sources of conflict – functional and dysfunctional conflicts
2. Understanding personal style of conflict resolution
3. Choosing the best strategy for dealing with a conflict
4. Developing skills in promoting constructive conflicts in organization and teams.
 Negotiation Skills:
1. Distinguishing distributive & integrative negotiations, position & principle negotiation
2. Identifying common mistakes in negotiation and ways to avoid them
3. Developing rational thinking in negotiation
4. Developing effective skills in negotiation that benefits all parties involved.
 Self-Awareness and Improvement:
1. Understanding the concept of self-management
2. Evaluate the effectiveness of self-management
3. Developing creative and holistic thinking
4. Understanding the importance of emotions in works as well in self-development
5. Understand of self-motivation
6. Effectively managing self-learning and change.
For more visit ChangingMinds.org

8. This can range from setting up an external observer in offices every so often or a
professional in the field to check the quality of work that is being produced in service or
product outputs.
“Quality control is a process employed to ensure a certain level of quality in a product or
service. It may include whatever actions a business deems necessary to provide for the
control and verification of certain characteristics of a product or service. The basic goal
of quality control is to ensure that the products, services, or processes provided meet
specific requirements and are dependable, satisfactory, and fiscally sound.” Wise Geek
As long as you as a manager or executive can
ensure that day to day production is practising the
theory of your effective business plan through
quality control, you can guarantee that you are
providing a product or service that customers will
come back for.
Output variables can be honed in on in terms of
time –such as where something like staff training
could ensure a quicker or more effective turnover
rate- and cost price –such as finding better deals for Image by:
Artois Bibliothèques
essential components of outputs- could be reviewed Flickr
for more effective solutions.

9. Running costs will always be managed by a balancing act between necessity of business
essentials and their availability, quality and price. Some areas can be reconsidered for
effectiveness to save your business money from within the day to day running costs area of your
budget:
 Communications:
• Are you on the best communication network
for the size and usage of your business?
• Could your business qualify for a group
communications set up such as email and
online messaging services to ensure more
effective communication?
 Utilities:
• Check that your business energy provider is
giving you the most for your money
• Check that you are not wasting water or
electricity over night or week-ends and for
ways you can cut down on general utilities
costs.
 Office supplies: Image by:
• Are you ordering day to day essentials Images of Money Flickr
like printer fillers and paper in bulk to help
you save money?

10. Keeping your staff happy is based on, according to Dominic Monkhouse for Service Obsession,
a few but essential implementations on your part as a manager or executive:
1. Make sure you are the right company for your employees.
It is all very well recruiting individuals you consider to be
perfect, but the feeling must be mutual. If your company is not
right for them, your staff will remain dissatisfied and
unproductive.
2. Give your workforce a voice. Encouraging your employees to
contribute their opinions and ideas to the business not only
unveils brilliant ideas but ensures the “team” actually feels like
one. You could give your staff a quota to suggest two business
improvements per month. If the cost is less than £100, let them
go ahead and make improvements for the greater good. It will
never cost any more than this in goodwill or settlements.
3. Make the workplace a positive space. Offices are the
voluntary equivalent of a prison cell – sterile, cramped and
claustrophobic environments in close quarters with people you
may or may not enjoy sharing personal space with, never mind
a conversation. Making your workspace more aesthetically Image by:
tuppus Flickr
agreeable improves employee productivity and efficiency.

11. 4. Small but effective perks. Pay rises are not always
the best incentive for employees. Regular and thoughtful
perks can be really effective. “Free Food” day on the last
day of the month is quick and easy, beer o’clock on a Friday
always welcomes the weekend in and free use of the
mooring outside our office goes down well too.
5. When it’s not right, it’s just not right. Employers
(not employees) are the cardinal sinners of failing to
address the reality of working relationships. So introduce a
weekly happy check – ask your employees to rate their
happiness on a scale from one to three, and then speak to Image by:
people if they are unhappy. It prevents problems escalating Sasha W Flickr
and lets your workforce know you care about their well-
being.
However, people are all different and sometimes, despite
everyone’s best intentions, it just isn’t going to work.
Employers convince themselves it might get better; trust
me, it won’t. This year, businesses need to have an honest
look at their teams – are they full of people you’d go to the
pub with for a pint? If not, the fit isn’t right and these staff
aren’t adding value in the right way to your customers. Take
courage and confront the situation to do both sides a favour. Image by:
.reid. Flickr

12.  Pleaseclick hyperlinks for quote
sources and for more information for
both text and images

13. “A business of high principle generates greater
drive and effectiveness because people know
that they can do the right thing decisively and
with confidence. “
Marvin Bower