How to smash your business plan - the Super League Way!

1. Scenario test once only, using a simple excel formula (should take an hour or so max):

Real Madrid v Man Utd = money maker. Click @sum x 8 = guaranteed revenue buster!

Add a couple of noughts to the final figures in the vain hope that finance won’t evaluate the outcome until a couple of years later anyway. Planning phase complete.

Now, coerce some of your most influential business partners with option 1 “snooze you lose” or option 2 “share the wealth” but do not engage anyone outside of your current magic circle of power. Zoom calls get clunky when you invite too many to the room.

2. Your staff* and your loyal customers MUST be the last to know. Do not communicate (ever). Who doesn’t love a letter of intent as an alternative to talking to people anyway? Preferably hide the timing of the news behind something bigger like Mourinho getting sacked.

This will save you from having to invest time with your comms team or any money on marketing the idea. Congratulations, you’ve just added another zero to the business case.

*Employee engagement will have zero impact on your business plan anyway and you can always address that with an expensive employee survey at the end of the year, paid for by the fat profits you’ve just banked theoretically via excel (you're reckoning finance won’t check ‘actuals’ against your business case until 2023 so you’re okay for now).

3. Business Justifications are for wimps. Instead spend the time thinking of a catchy name for your plan. 'Super' is how you feel right now.

"Super League 1 v 0 Premier League". What’s not to love about that concept? It almost sounds like a soccer score and you know your customers love that type of thing on Fifa21. If your plan has a snappy title, then it’s good to go. Business case ratified.

And if anyone questions the morality of your proposal just tell them you are doing this for all those impoverished kids who you are worried were losing interest in your brand.*

*You won’t need to have surveyed those kids to see what they really think of your idea…they’re too busy pretending to be Haaland on Fifa 21…and you've heard Borussia Dortmund prefer teams to zoom anyway, hence why they didn't even bother to join your call.

4. Never create a business plan with the big picture in mind (feel free to call it Project Big Picture though because that sound visionary, almost philanthropic). Your idea IS the big picture. And if on the face of it it looks a bit greedy, anti-competitive or out of kilter with everything else that’s going on in society right now, just push forward belligerently. Be safe in the knowledge their opinion will soon be as irrelevant as a relegation 6 pointer between Fulham and Brighton on a Monday night.

5. Focus everything you’ve got on Plan A. If the initial reception to Plan A feels colder than the transport carrying your next shot of Pfizer, then silence may indeed become a kind of permanent Plan B. Your employees and loyal customers warm to silence. Just ask Chelsea fans if you want to 'stress test' this theory.

Apart from anything, the Comms and marketing team you forgot to tell are now busy looking for an alternative lower ‘Premier’ team anyway so it’s best you play within your comfort zone. You snoozed, the Comms and marketing team lost...twice.

6. It doesn’t matter if your business case is a fundamental departure from the brand that took decades to build. It’s time to add the ‘R’ to evolution except in this one nobody dies (other than a few football clubs you've never head of before).

It’s not going to be just fast eats slow, it will even be big eats small too. And who doesn’t buy into that for a bit of brand heritage for your customers to cling to. Fifty years from now, 2021 will be remembered for two things only - your visionary brilliance and Mourinho getting sacked of course.

What's more, pretty soon, you’ll have made so much cash, you’ll be able to buy a whole new customer base. You'll still even have money spare to invest in creating a half and half Liverpool/ United screensaver for that new broadcasting channel you are also planning to become the non-exec director of. It’s that type of visionary thinking and customer insight that put you in the box seat for this type of decision making in the first place!

7. Finally, you spent a whole 2.75 days of zoom calls discussing this business case with your self-interested friends so now just sit back and hold firm (for 24 hours or so). What can go wrong?

However, on the off chance a couple of your weaker business partners break rank and the whole thing looks like crumbling, just deny you were ever involved.

Instead, tuck the spreadsheet away in some hidden corner of the project team’s shared drive. Just don’t forget to change the excel ‘modified by’ user name on the front sheet to some obviously made up name like “Edward Woodward”. Let someone else take the flack if it all goes belly up, it’s time for you to get right back and plan your next super idea. Who on earth is Haaland anyway and why are there still so many empty seats at football grounds? Time for another excel spreadsheet...

If anyone has any additional thoughts or comments about how to build effective business plans, I would love for you to comment on this article or contact me via linkedin.