Consider your resources
考虑你的资源
Now ask yourself what resources you'll need at each project phase.
For example, in the Satellite scenario, Sydney might expect to need someone from the procurement group to develop and monitor the contract between Satellite and the consulting firm. She will also need $2 million added to her budget to pay for the consulting contract.
Show any movement of budget dollars and headcount as a step in your project plan. Otherwise, it may be overlooked, or decision makers may assume you will fund the project from your current budget.
Clarify accountability and responsibility
明确责任和义务
Many projects do not succeed because managers fail to clarify who will be accountable for each milestone and to get a commitment from these individuals.
For example, Sydney knows she'll need someone from the procurement group to negotiate the consulting contract. But if she doesn't confirm with the department up front that they can provide someone, she may be left empty-handed when the contract negotiation phase begins.
In your implementation plan, name the individuals who will do each phase of the work. Also indicate who will be responsible for ensuring that each phase of the project realizes its intended results in terms of costs, revenues, benefits, and deliverables. (More than one person may share this responsibility.)
When reviewing your business plan, decision makers will also want to determine what burdens they'll have to shoulder in order for your proposed solution to succeed.
For example, in the Satellite scenario, the sales group would need to increase their forecasted revenue commitments to justify the cost of hiring the consulting firm.
Indicate when you'll see the payoff
表明你什么时候能看到回报
Decision makers reviewing your business case want to know when they can expect your solution to pay off—to generate the promised benefits. To answer this question, look at your data and clearly identify the range of impacts you expect to see during implementation of your solution.
For example, Sydney expects sales revenue to increase by $7 million once her solution is implemented. Does she anticipate it will rise immediately? Probably not. More likely, she expects it to be flat at first. She believes that 10% of the annualized $7 million (or $175,000) will be realized in Q3 and 30% (or $525,000) in Q4 of year one; 60% in year two ($4.2 million); and the full $7 million at the end of year three.
In estimating payoff dates, remember to plan for a lag between the time results occur and when they are recorded. Though your plan might generate the expected results during the expected period, those results may not get recorded in your company's performance management system until the following period.
Track and evaluate your results
跟踪和评估您的结果
The projections in your implementation plan help you "sell" your case to decision-makers. They will also provide benchmarks for evaluating your project's effectiveness once it's implemented.
If your recommended solution receives the go-ahead, your organization will want you to regularly report on the project's successes and shortfalls. By keeping track of your estimated due dates versus the actual delivery dates, as well as estimated benefits versus actual benefits, you will generate the data you'll need to garner support for your project through each of its milestones.
Tracking your project's results will also help you strengthen your ability to build sound business cases and lead projects.
For example, once your project rolls into action, it may generate results that far exceed your expectations—signaling that you might have been too conservative in your business case. Or, you could see results that fall far short of your forecasts—suggesting that you may have been overly ambitious.
Whether your results prove better or worse than your expectations, take time to identify the causes behind any major deviation from your business case. By understanding what went wrong, you can learn what to do differently in the future. And by identifying what worked, you derive successful practices to use in subsequent efforts.
Key Idea: Understand your audience
关键理念：了解你的听众
Key Idea
Building a business case is hard work. You may feel tempted to explain every detail of all that work to your decision makers while presenting your case to them. Resist that urge. In presenting your case, you want to deliver a short, focused sales pitch, not a lengthy, detailed lecture—even if your written business case contains rich detail.
Who will decide whether to approve your proposed solution? You'll need to sell your case to the decision makers—and to those who influence them. How? Consider the following tactics:
• What do you want them to do? What do you want from each individual in your audience? Do you want them to approve resources? Do you want them to talk up your proposal to others? Clearly state your need.
• What do they value/care about? Do they care about ROI? Customer satisfaction? Some other measurement of business performance? You identified your stakeholders' business objectives early in the process of building your business case. Now tailor your pitch to highlight the expected results and metrics that are most important to each decision maker.
• What do they stand to gain? Explain how your audience will benefit if your idea is implemented. For example, perhaps the vice president of sales will get his staff up to speed more quickly or exceed sales targets if your recommendation is put into action.
• What is their level of risk tolerance? Demonstrate that you've considered the risks inherent in your proposed course of action, and explain your plan for mitigating them.
• How do they like to receive information? What does your audience or your company require for written business cases in terms of format and level of detail? Do they want cases summarized in three slides—or in a two-page, single-spaced document? Will they require a copy of your case before meeting with you to hear your presentation?
What's the best way to sell your business case? Start by thinking about what your audience wants—and what you want them to do. Choose a format
Put the argument into a concrete shape... round and solid as a ball, which they
can see and handle and carry home with them, and the cause is half won.
–Ralph Waldo Emerson
Check with your finance, strategy, or human resource department to see if your company requires a certain layout for business cases. If your company doesn't mandate a certain format, consider using the Business Case Template provided in this topic.
Even if your company only requires a written document for each business case, consider also creating a visual presentation to help sell your idea.
Make your case visually
使你的案件视觉化
If created effectively, slide presentations help focus your audience's attention. Since viewing too many slides can be overwhelming to your audience, keep slides to a minimum. Use no more than seven slides to make your case.
The slides you'll want to include correspond approximately to the steps you followed to build your business case:
• Slide 1—The opportunity statement.
• Slide 2—The two or three alternatives you considered, as well as the business objectives and performance metrics you chose to measure your alternatives against.
• Slide 3—A summary of the costs and benefits you considered.
• Slide 4—Your initial recommendation and why you chose it.
• Slide 5—The risks associated with this recommendation and how you plan to mitigate them.
• Slide 6—The high-level milestones you expect to achieve and dates when the organization will realize benefits; persons accountable for each milestone; and resources needed for each milestone.
• Slide 7—A reiteration of why the opportunity is important and how your recommendation will benefit your organization.
Don't include formulas and calculations in your slides. Instead, create a few backup slides containing this information, in case someone in your audience asks about them. Listeners tend to lose track of the main idea when the presenter gets too focused on small details. Plan to walk your audience through the presentation and then take time to go more in depth if people have questions.
Be sure to have all your backup information well organized and easily accessible so you are prepared for questions during and after your presentation.
Overview概述
This section provides interactive exercises so you can practice what you've learned. These exercises are self-checks only; your answers will not be used to evaluate your performance in the topic.
Steps for building support for your business case
为您的业务案例建立支持的步骤
1. Identify key stakeholders and decision makers.
Consider whom your idea will impact. Also, who controls the resources you will need to implement it? Ask yourself how these people might respond to your idea.
2. Ask for input from stakeholders early in the process.
Arrange an informal meeting with key stakeholders to ask for their advice on the ideas you have explored in your business case. Your goal in these meetings is not to present the case but just to discuss it. Before you meet with stakeholders, anticipate their concerns and be prepared to answer their questions. During your meetings, try to uncover the opportunities
and issues that are most important. What do they care about? How will they benefit from your idea? Have them identify any gaps they see; it's better to get input on your plan's shortcomings now than have them pointed out later in the process.
3. Incorporate any feedback into your case.
The discussions you have with stakeholders will help bring to the surface information that you can use to improve your proposal and help secure approval. For example, you may learn which business objectives are most important to key decision makers. You might then
evaluate your options against these objectives. In addition, you may learn other information that is critical for your case.
4. Ask for input from trusted advisers.
As you build your case, show your preliminary work to trusted advisers and mentors in your informal network. Ask the individuals to look for holes in your analysis and to suggest questions that decision makers might raise. Revise your case based on the input you receive.
5. Create multiple delivery formats for your case.
When you are ready to sell your recommendation, you'll want to create different versions of your business case for different stakeholders. For example, you might want to have a detailed document including all of your assumptions and calculations for your advisors and your own use. Prepare a higher-level slide presentation for communicating your idea to decision makers. You might also want to create an executive summary tailored to address specific stakeholder concerns and interests for groups that would be affected by your
recommendation.
Steps for analyzing alternatives
分析备选方案的步骤
1. List the costs.
Start by thinking about all of the costs that might be associated with each alternative. Identify the up-front costs as well as those you might expect in subsequent years. Make sure to think beyond the obvious financial costs such as purchasing equipment or paying salaries. Consider the business objectives you chose to evaluate and how each alternative will impact them. For example, will the alternative negatively impact employee turnover? If so, can you quantify it? You'll probably need to do research to come up with the relevant
numbers. Ask for help from people in other departments such as finance or sales. Also consider looking at industry reports and on the Internet for estimates. Remember to record your sources of information and list any assumptions you make as you go along.
2. List the benefits of expected additional revenues.
Again, consider the business objectives you've chosen. What benefits do you anticipate resulting from each alternative? How will these benefits impact revenues? For example, how will your project impact customer satisfaction? Can you make a correlation between improved customer satisfaction and an increase in sales? Additional revenues might come from either obtaining new customers or from increased purchases from existing customers.
Make sure to consider any costs associated with obtaining these revenues and add them to your list of costs described above.
3. Point out any cost savings to be gained.
Consider how implementing each alternative could save the organization money. Spend some time thinking about this area because cost savings can be difficult to recognize. They can arise from a variety of sources. For example, will fewer people be required to do a job because of your project? Will your project reduce the time it takes to complete a task, therefore allowing for more work to be completed, or more products to be manufactured?
4. Identify when you expect to see the costs and anticipated revenues.
Look at your three lists and try to estimate when you expect to realize each item on the list. Remember that costs and revenue increases will probably occur incrementally. For example, you might expect revenues to increase by 20% in the first year, achieving a 100% increase by the end of year three. Completing this step will also help when you create your implementation plan.
5. List any unquantifiable benefits and costs.
Most business cases aren't built on numbers alone. Depending on the business objectives you chose to use for your analyses, you will probably have some qualitative factors to consider as well. For example, the strategic fit of each alternative with your organization's mission, or an increase in community goodwill because of a particular action. Other factors to consider include the ability to take on the new opportunity without losing focus, or the likelihood of success given market conditions. Even without numbers associated with them, 
these costs and benefits can be persuasive and are important to consider.
6. Conduct your financial analyses.
How does each of your alternatives impact finances? Once you have a list of costs and benefits and have quantified as many factors as possible, it's time to run the numbers. Depending on the metrics you have chosen, you might consider calculating the return on investment (ROI), payback period, or net present value. You might also consider a breakeven analysis. You don't need to do these analyses yourself. Instead, ask a colleague for help (e.g., someone in your finance department).
7. Organize the information into a table for comparison.
Once you have all of the information, put it into a table to help you compare your options. One format to consider is the pros/cons table because it is easy to use when you have both quantifiable and unquantifiable costs and benefits.
Steps for choosing a final recommendation
选择最终建议的步骤
1. Select a preliminary recommendation.
Review the alternatives you've developed. Compare and contrast their pros and cons. Which of your alternatives best supports your organization's business objectives? Which of these stated objectives are most important to your organization? Think about whether one option will be easier to implement than the others. Also, be sure to weigh unquantifiable factors. For example, if the return on investment is similar for two alternatives, you might want to give more consideration to strategic fit when making your final decision. If you have
difficulty narrowing your choice to one option at this stage, you can keep the two best options and work from there.
2. Document the rationale for your decision.
Once you've made your decision using your best judgment, it is important to explicitly document the rationale for your decision. Do this as soon as possible to avoid overlooking any aspect of your decision-making process. Try to create a concise bulleted list of the four to six primary reasons why you selected your option(s) so you will be able explain them succinctly to stakeholders and decision makers.
3. Consider the risks.
Identify the potential risks to both you and the organization of implementing your recommended choice(s). Consider any risks related to your career, the implementation, and your projected numbers. Also consider running some sensitivity analyses to see how your numbers would change using different estimates or assumptions.
4. Look for ways to mitigate the risks.
After you identify risks, think about how you can mitigate them. For example, could you start with a pilot project to test your assumptions before launching a full-scale implementation? Also, consider whether you have control over the risks associated with your recommended alternative(s). For example, would either fail if a competitor lowered its prices or the price of a raw material you use in manufacturing increased?
5. Revisit your original recommendation.
Think about how desirable the outcome of your recommended option(s) would be. For example, would your department's morale increase significantly as a result? Then think about how likely the stated outcome is to occur (i.e., how many risks did you identify and how likely is it that you can control them?). Keep in mind your personal tolerance for risk and also that of your organization. If you have been considering two options until this point, consider which one makes the most sense in light of these factors. It's possible that you might find that yet another option (possibly a combination of alternatives) is actually the most desirable.
Tips for gathering data收集数据的技巧
• Define the categories of information
you'll need to compare your options. Use the business objectives you selected to help guide your process.
• Make a list of the specific questions
you want answered, such as "How much will it cost to replace a sales employee?" or "How will customer satisfaction be impacted by this alternative?"
• Be prepared to add to your list of questions.
As you gather information, you'll probably identify additional factors that could impact your alternatives. For example, meeting with a colleague in operations may inspire you to consider elements you would never have thought of on your own.
• Document your assumptions and sources as you go.
It's easy to forget where you found a particular piece of information. Keeping a list will help you explain your logic if someone asks.
• Make sure your estimates are realistic. 
Consider whether the data you find sounds correct. If not, seek additional estimates.
• For each piece of information
consult multiple sources, such as several colleagues in different departments, to get the best estimates possible.
• Once you gather the data
 ask for input from individuals in departments that would be affected by your recommendation to make sure you haven't overlooked anything.
Tips for creating an implementation plan
创建实施计划的技巧
• Consider all of the steps it will take to make your project a reality. 
But include only major milestones in the case you present to decision makers. This audience does not need a high level of detail.
• Make sure your milestones can be clearly defined and easily measured
—for example, "develop pilot training content" or "conduct market testing."
• Use generic rather than specific dates
—for example, "year one" or "six months from contract approval."
• Be realistic about the time
it will take to implement your recommendation. Managers often underestimate the time they'll need.
• Consider the resources 
you'll need for each milestone and whether they will be available for your project. For example, is it likely that someone from sales will be available to help review your training program? If not, who else could help you?
• Be prepared for decision makers to ask you to speed up the implementation.
Have a backup plan for how you could do things more quickly or a convincing set of reasons why it is too risky to push the dates up.
• Use specific names
not just department names or position titles, when assigning accountability for a task or committed result.
Tips for writing your business case
撰写商业案例的技巧
• Ask if your company has a required format for business cases.
If it doesn't, consider what format would be best for your particular audience—for example, an executive summary highlighting the key points for upper management.
• Remember that this is a sales pitch.
Engage your audience by clearly stating the opportunity up front and selling the opportunity again at the end of your document.
• Clearly illustrate how you've arrived at your recommendation. Documenting each step you've taken will help the reader better understand the reasoning behind your proposal.
• Make it interesting. 
Remember someone will have to read your case—your success depends on your ability to tell a convincing story.
• Keep it concise.
Your case should be as short as possible while still providing enough detail to give the reader the whole story.
• Use descriptive language
(not just a series of bullet points) to help your reader visualize your expected outcomes.
• Demonstrate the value of the project
from all points of view—financial, customer, executive, employees, and society as a whole. Tell your reader why this project is important.
• Be clear about what you are asking your audience to do.
Do you need resources from them? Do you need their support to get their direct reports to work on your project? Do you need additional headcount, expense dollars or capital dollars?
• Verify that you have calculated the numbers correctly.
Ideally, have finance review your calculations and assumptions before you present your case to others.
Why Develop Others?
为什么要培养别人？
“At the end of the day, you bet on people, not strategies.”
Larry Bossidy
Former CEO, AlliedSignal
In today’s global business environment, markets and regulations change quickly. Competitors constantly innovate. Technological changes are the norm.
In order to outmaneuver the competition and meet the demands of the moment, organizations must be agile. They must execute flawlessly. And they must transform themselves continuously.
Are your leaders ready?
We have now entered an era where I don’t care what industry you’re in, you need leaders who can make decisions, make judgment calls at every single level. All the way down to the interface with the customer.
If you go to a company like Google or any of the high tech companies, a lot of the innovation that Amazon does is happening right at the front line. Go ahead, try it, put it out there, we'll learn from it. That cannot happen if the senior leadership doesn't have a commitment to both develop the leadership capability, but develop the business through engaging people at all levels of the organization.
Becoming a teaching organization
成为一个教学组织
I like to tell parents that they cannot delegate their responsibility to develop their children. And I think it is the same in an organization. Day in and day out the person that has the biggest impact on people in the organization is the next level above and the associates around and below. And so to build a learning organization I say is not enough. Learning could be, you know we are learning cooking, we are learning this or that, but teaching organizations, when I learned something, I have a responsibility to teach my colleagues.
So everybody takes responsibility for generating new knowledge and it is not enough to be a learner, you then have to translate it into teaching.
The Virtuous Teaching Cycle
教学的良性循环
The role of a leader is to ensure that the people who work for them and around them are better every day. There's only one way to make people better. It's to teach them, learn from them, create what I call "virtuous teaching cycles”, not command and control.
A virtuous teaching cycle is teach learn, teach learn. And the leader has a responsibility for reducing the hierarchy, for having a point of view to start the discussion, but then to be responsible to hear everyone's voice, get everyone involved in a disciplined way. It is not a free for all. But it is the leader's responsibility to create that virtuous teaching cycle.
A wonderful example of virtuous teaching cycle is the program that Roger Enrico ran at Pepsi, where every one of the 10 vice presidents comes with a business project.
Roger Enrico gets smarter as result of five days with 10 vice presidents, because he's learning from them. He needs to lower the hierarchy. He needs to be open to learning. And in turn, the people participating need to be energized and empowered to come up and engage in problem solving.
Another example is at Best Buy, where every morning in the stores you would bring 20 associates or so together and they would review the profit and loss statement from the day before, what we learned from the different customer segments in our stores, what we can do to improve our performance this day. And they do that every single day. The store manager was learning mostly from the associates on the floor.
That was a virtuous teaching cycle were everybody is teaching everybody, everybody is learning and the result has been an incredible result at Best Buy.
“The growth and development of people is the highest calling of leadership.”
- Harvey S. Firestone
Founder, Firestone Tire and Rubber Co
There are clear advantages to leader-led development. But for many leaders, taking on teaching, coaching, and other development responsibilities can seem daunting. You might avoid taking on these roles due to lack of time, resources, or your own lack of comfort with this role.
The following tips and resources can help you impart valuable learning to your team every day.
To develop others…
去发展他人…
• Start with a Teachable Point of View
从可教的观点开始
The first requirement of being able to develop other leaders is to have what I call ateachable point of view. I often give the example of, if I ran a tennis camp and you just came to day one of the tennis camp, I better have a teachable  point of view on how I teachtennis. So you are standing there looking at me and it has got four elements. One, theideas, well how do I teach the backhand, the forehand, the serve, rules of tennis. Then if Iam a good tennis coach, I have a set of values. What are the right behaviors I want, how doI want you to dress, how do I want you to behave on the tennis court.
But if that's all I have, what do I do? Show you a power point presentation and then expectyou to hit 500 backhands, 500 serves, run around for eight hours. I have to have ateachable point of view on emotional energy. How do I motivate you to buy in to the ideasand values?
On one end of the spectrum it could be I threaten you with corporal 
punishment, the other Igive you stock options, I can make you feel good about yourself, I can help youdevelop as a human being, what motivates you.
And then finally, how do I make the tough judgment calls, the yes/no, decisions as thetennis coach, the ball is in, the ball is out. I don't hire consultants and set up a committee, itis yes/no. And the same with running a business, what are the products, services, distribution channels, customer segments that are going to grow top line growth and profitability of the organization.
What are the values that I want everyone in the organization to have, how do I emotionally energize thousands of people, and then how do I make the yes/no, judgments on people and on business issues. So the fundamental building block of being able to develop other leaders is to have that teachable point of view just like the tennis coach.
• Lead with questions提出问题
Questions are hugely important because you want to create dialogue and again, what I calla virtuous teaching cycle where the teacher learns from the students and vice versa. Whichmeans everybody ought to be free to ask whatever is on their mind, whatever it will take to get clarity and understanding, but it is not the leader just coming in and freeform asking questions. I believe the leader has a responsibility for framing the discussion, for having as
best they can a teachable point of view, they may need help from their people in flushing it out, but they need to set the stage but then it has to be a very interactive, what I call virtuous teaching cycle environment, teach learn, teach learn, teach learn.
• Make it part of your routine让它成为你日常生活的一部分
A good example to me of an outstanding leader developing other leaders is Myrtle Potter who at the time I am commenting was Chief Operating Officer of Genentech running the commercial side of the business. And she would take time at the end of every single meeting and do some coaching of the whole team on how we could perform as a team better, and then she would often take individuals and say, could we spend 10 minutes over a cup of coffee, I want to give you some feedback and coaching on that report that you just
presented on or how you are handling a particularly difficult human resource issue, but it was part of her regular routine. And I think the challenge for all of us as leaders is to make that a way of life and it is built into the fabric of how we lead and it is not a one off event, three times a year. It is happening almost every day.
• Make it a priority•优先考虑
One of the biggest challenges in getting people kind of on this path is to overcome some of their own resistance, either fear or the way I view the world I don't have time for this, everybody can make time. Roger Enrico is CEO of Pepsi. He didn't have time to go off for a week at a time and run training sessions. He had to readjust his calendar. So it requires you to look in the mirror and say, is this important. If it is important, of course I can make the time. Then I have to get over my own anxiety on how well I can do it, but it is a
commitment to get on the path that says: this is how I am going to drive my own performance and the performance of my colleagues.
• Learn to teach学会教书
I think the biggest mistake is to assume you are going to be good at it right off the bat. It is like learning anything else. First time you go out and try and play tennis, good luck. But you got to stay with it and you got to engage your people in helping make you better and them better. And so it is a journey you need to get on, not I am going to do it perfectly when I start out.
If you want to be a great leader who is a great teacher, it's very simple. You have got to dive into the deep end of the pool. But you've got to dive into the pool with preparation. I don't want you drowning. I want you succeeding. It is extraordinarily rewarding for most human beings to teach others. I think once you can turn that switch on, it is self perpetuating. You get a lot of reinforcement, your team is better. You perform better because your performance goes up and it becomes this virtuous teaching cycle.
Your opportunity to develop others
你发展他人的机会
We’ve heard why developing others can drive greater business results, and how to make the most of your leader-led development efforts. The materials provided in Develop Others enable you to create personalized learning experiences for YOUR team within the flow of their daily activities. Use the guides and projects to engage your team quickly. And to explore how key concepts apply to them in the context of their priorities and goals. The value of teaching is the performance of the organization is totally dependent on making
your people smarter and more aligned every day as the world changes. In the 21st century we are not going to get by with command and control. We are going to have to get by with knowledge creation. The way you create knowledge in an organization is you create these virtuous teaching cycles where you are teaching and learning simultaneously, responding to customer demands and changes, responding to changes in the global environment. My
bottom line is if you're not teaching, you're not leading.
A leader’s most important role in any organization is making good judgments — well informed, wise decisions about people, strategy and crises that produce the desired outcomes. When a leader shows consistently good judgment, little else matters. When he or she shows poor judgment nothing else matters. In addition to making their own good judgment calls, good leaders develop good judgment among their team members.
Share an Idea分享一个想法
Leaders are in a unique position to recognize the ideas and tools that are most relevant and useful for their teams. If you only have a few minutes, consider sharing an idea or tool from this topic with your team or peers that is relevant and timely to their situation.
For example, consider sending one of the three recommended ideas or tools below to your team with your comments or questions on how the idea or tool can be of value to your organization. By simply sharing the item, you can easily engage others in important conversations and activities relevant to your goals and priorities.
Tips for writing your business case撰写商业案例的技巧

Checklist for creating a business case
创建业务案例的清单
Steps for building support for your business case
To share an idea, tip, step, or tool with your comments via e-mail, select the EMAIL link in the upper right corner of the page that contains the idea, tip, step, or tool that you wish to share.
Discussion 1: Generating alternatives
讨论1：生成备选方案
To generate value for your organization, your team members need to keep an eye out for business opportunities they might exploit. They then need to build a compelling business case for actions they’re proposing in order to exploit those opportunities. As they generate ideas for such actions, your people may fall victim to common pitfalls — such as clinging to the first idea they come up with instead of brainstorming a full set of alternative courses of action. In addition, they may not realize that they need input from important stakeholders about the alternatives they’re considering.
Such mistakes can prevent your employees from selecting the best course of action and can make it difficult for them to “sell” their ideas to stakeholders whose support they’ll need.
Use these resources to lead a discussion with your team about these key aspects of building a business case.
Working through the discussion guide can take up to 45 minutes. If you prefer a shorter 15- or 30- minute session, you may want to focus only on those concepts and activities most relevant to your situation.
Discussion 2: Assessing and mitigating risks
讨论2：评估和减轻风险
When your team has chosen a course of action to exploit a business opportunity, they may be tempted to immediately develop a plan for implementing their idea and communicating a business case to decision makers.
But they need to do one key thing before taking those steps: assess the risks inherent in their chosen course of action, and decide how to mitigate those risks. If they neglect this step, they may put their idea into action only to encounter unpleasant surprises (such as a lack of sufficient resources to implement their idea).
Use these resources to lead a discussion with your team about how to assess and mitigate the risks in their business idea before they move ahead with the idea.
Tips for Preparing for and Leading the Discussion
准备和领导讨论的技巧
Note: Consider inviting to the discussion individuals outside your team who can shed additional light on the risks inherent in a course of action your team members are proposing.
Working through the discussion guide can take up to 45 minutes. If you prefer a shorter 15- or 30- minute session, you may want to focus only on those concepts and activities most relevant to your situation.
Start a Group Project
启动组项目

Just like any change effort, successfully incorporating new skills and behaviors into one’s daily activities and habits takes time and effort. After reviewing or discussing the concepts in this topic, your direct reports will still need your support to fully apply new concepts and skills. They will need to overcome a variety of barriers including a lack of time, lack of confidence, and a fear of making mistakes. They will also need opportunities to hone their skills and break old habits. To help ensure their success, you can provide safe opportunities for individuals and your team as a whole to practice and experiment with new skills and behaviors on the job.
For example, to encourage the adoption of new norms, you can provide your team members with coaching, feedback, and additional time to complete tasks that require the use of new skills.
Management approaches such as these will encourage team members to experiment with new skills until they become proficient. Group learning projects provide another valuable technique for accelerating team members’
development of new behaviors. A group learning project is an on-the-job activity aimed at providing team members with direct experience implementing their new knowledge and skills.
Through a learning project, team members discover how new concepts work in the context of their situation, while simultaneously having a direct and tangible impact on the organization.
The documents below provide steps, tips, and a template for initiating a group learning project with your team, along with two project recommendations for this topic.
Summary总结
When putting together a proposal, many business people start off with their company's history, trot out its mission statement, then discuss the company's philosophy before ever addressing the most crucial thing: the potential customer. The result is a generic document stuffed with boilerplate text—text that will be largely unread. For a proposal to be effective, it must be written with the prospective customer firmly in mind, and it must offer a solution that's tailor-made to that prospective customer's needs.
Writing an Executive Summary That Means Business
写一份执行摘要
An effective executive summary needs to deliver information persuasively, describing potential outcomes and impacts. Here you'll find some tips for mastering the approach to writing an executive summary that balances delivery with a well-substantiated pitch.
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