Book review: Greg Spira’s Trust the Plan

Greg Spira’s vast expertise in Demand Management and Integrated Business Planning is on full display in his new book for business executives, Trust the Plan: Demand Management for Business Leaders. In the book, he skillfully describes the significant facets that leaders must incorporate if they hope to create a credible demand plan.

Trust the Plan presents best practices for creating a demand plan that reflects sales and marketing actions undertaken to achieve business goals. It not only addresses roles and responsibilities but offers a wealth of examples and case studies to illustrate how to turn concepts into concrete actions. Without diving into the nitty gritty of statistics or detailed performance measures, the book expertly addresses the human side of the planning activity — and in particular, the necessary common denominator throughout of trust.

Spira writes, “The hard and soft costs associated with the lack of leadership trust and alignment are real and significant. When trust is lacking between leaders, it inevitably cascades down through their teams.”

Not only must leaders ensure the development of a credible demand plan that’s trusted by the company’s leaders and internal stakeholders, they must also trust their teams to execute it and to communicate when any deviations to the plan are anticipated or occur. As such, Spira shares how to build and maintain the trust that will permeate through the leadership team and throughout the team. After all, points out Spira, the demand plan is the overarching document upon which internal stakeholders rely as critical to their functional activities, plans, and responsibilities.

The demand plan that’s considered untrustworthy by the entire team will not be relied upon and, consequently, have no bearing on decision-making or business performance. Therefore, leaders must drive consensus and ensure cross-functional compatibility in plan development.

Executive leaders must make certain that they gather adequate input to the plan from its end users. Such transparency also establishes buy-in at all levels.

Spira offers the analogy of the “bullwhip effect” to illustrate why it’s important to pay attention to internal stakeholders. When operators along a value chain distort any information, it may seem like a minor adjustment. But just as cracking a whip transfers a relatively small movement from the handle of the whip, it results in a sort of sonic boon at the tail end — creating a distortion in demand that’s difficult and costly to manage.

Once the plan is in use, leadership measures its performance by examining if the organization did what it said it would do and if the impact of its actions was consistent with what was expected.

Writes Spira, “In my view, business goals and objectives should be the primary measuring stick against which execution of the demand plan is evaluated.” Measuring performance is a necessity for learning and continuously improving plan development.

Spira’s Trust the Plan is a treasure trove of best practices, telling examples, and insightful advice that will enable leaders to lead the process of developing a robust demand management plan that the entire organization will trust and execute.

Written by Ladys Patino.

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