Why A Business Roadmap Is The Best New Tool
A small business focused on its mission will outlast a corporation focused on the next sale.
Many people will tell you the purpose of a business is to make money. You will not find any disagreement here; I agree. You will not be in business much longer if your business is not making money. I might dispute what the company chooses to focus on in its day-to-day operations.
I believe many businesses struggle with remaining focused on their mission. It is understandable. Imagine your business is not doing well, and all you can think about is putting food on the table. That makes you, and in turn, the company, focus on the next sale. In situations like this is where a Business Roadmap (BRM) will be your best friend.
1) What Is A Business Roadmap?
2) Are Business Roadmaps The Best Tool?
3) Build Your Business Roadmap
2) Are Business Roadmaps The Best Tool?
3) Build Your Business Roadmap
What is a Business Roadmap?
“Business roadmaps” might sound familiar because of the popularity of project and product roadmaps. Where project and product roadmaps focus on smaller parts of the business, they function the same as a business roadmap—acting as a tool to focus the company on achieving set goals.
Many businesses start with a business plan to present to investors and banks. The purpose of a business plan makes it full of information like identifying opportunities, market analysis, and solutions. This thick information business makes it difficult to refer to when needed quickly.
A “business roadmap” brings a business plan to life with all of its dense information. With graphics, milestones, task completion, and delegated responsibility, business roadmaps become one of the best tools for a business to realign itself.
Are Business Roadmaps the best Tool?
Short answer? Yes. Long Answer? You bet I have that too.
When an organization is growing and constantly navigating the ever-changing seas of the business environment, it is easy to lose what tasks have priority over others. It’s easy to forget about some goals entirely! In situations like this is where the logistically beautiful “business roadmap” comes in handy.
Business roadmaps are the best tool because they are all about logistics and how various roles, tasks, and responsibilities come together with dates. Business roadmaps become a map to keep the company’s activities aligned with the mission. They act as an easy-to-read map for the leaders who navigate the seas of the business environment.
Showing every department and their tasks in one document allows each department to see what the other department’s workload is. The visualization of the workloads might surface resourcing issues. Giving opportunity to reshuffle priorities and reassign tasks to spread the workload equally through departments.
Stating the purpose of activities highlights “business plans” usefulness. Like we often do, employees often ask themselves, “Why am I doing this task?” Stating a purpose for every task and visually seeing its effects on the business gives substance to employees’ assignments. As a result, employee engagement improves.
Milestones are a considerable aspect of the usefulness of “business roadmaps.” These can represent anything; hit revenues, a trade show, an upcoming event, a strategic partnership, important meetings, and even as simple as launching a product. Anything that results in the combination of efforts of departments/tasks can become a milestone.
Build Your Business Roadmap
A “business roadmap” is only as valuable as it can be understood.
To build a business roadmap, you must complete: Vision, Strategy, & Goals – Tell A Story – Employ Themes – Set Clear Outcomes.
Step 1: Vision, Strategy, and Goals
Business roadmaps are very execution-focused but still need to paint a picture. Paint the vision of where the business should be. Outline the strategy required to get there. Shade in goals to achieve on the journey. All together will paint a picture to focus the business.
Step 2: Tell a Story
Business roadmaps need to paint a picture as well as be a narrative. The creators will be the storytellers. Like a story, businesses have problems and states of being to achieve. There are chronological steps a business needs to take. The story is of how each progression builds to the next to complete the story.
Step 3: Employ Themes
A hallmark of a great story is using themes. Themes give context to goals and tasks by bundling them together. Themes can be thought of as settings or chapters with multiple assignments set within each theme. Examples of potential themes are: “developing a new product,” “going to market,” or “upgrading systems.”
Step 4: Set Clear Outcomes for Tasks
When completed, all tasks entered into the “business roadmap” must lead to a positive, measurable outcome. Completion needs to be measurable to track progress toward the vision. These are the questions to ask. “Why was that task important?” “What can we do now that we couldn’t before?” The answer should be clear and allow for the achievement of the next task.
Conclusion
Though business roadmaps are new to you, they are a powerful tool that has been in use by many brands, small to large. They consolidate a plethora of information into color-coded activities that show importance to the company’s mission. Most importantly, they can be re-written whenever to keep any business on track with achieving its mission.
Remember to set a vision for the plan, tell a story to achieve a vision, employ themes to split vision into steps, the have clear outcomes for how achieving tasks leads to achieving the vision.
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