Annual Planning Glossary.

We are now over half way through the year so why waste those quiet summer months when you could be preparing your business plans for 2014. Whilst there are still 5 months to run TMM have heard the first murmurs of 2014 forward planning. So for all others who have to go through this painful process we offer a glossary of the most popular terms and phrases that appear in every annual plan.


Revenue Projection - A single number that has to be at least 20% bigger than the last one. It is guessed the median of a distribution of probability that is so wide it makes the result irrelevant yet will be held as 100% predictive by the MBAs who run the spreadsheets.

Five Year Plan - A hockey stick graph running flat (investment phase) for 3 years with the pick up point selected to be just beyond when the plan author hopes to have landed a better job leaving those behind to cope with the inevitable underperformance.

Revenue Breakdown by Product - Micro-management for those who believe that your markets are predictable enough to set budgets by but not to allocate risk to.

Leveraging the Franchise - Assuming that large volume sophisticated professionals will pay the same margins as your small retail clients, whilst assuming that your retail clients have an appetite for the products the sophisticated professionals use that are banned for retail use anyway by the regulator.

Low Hanging Fruit - All the business that was harvested 20 years ago by your competition.

Niche Market - Only doing one thing averagely well.

New Initiatives - Painting old initiatives a different colour.

Focusing on Core Abilities - Excuse for lack of investment in new initiatives.

Product Development - Hurriedly patching together something that will hopefully mirror the thing that your CEO read was mentioned in your competitor's annual report as having generated them outperformance. Guaranteed to be out of date and not profitable by time of implementation.

Cross-Selling Opportunities - Bothering your colleagues for business (instead of the clients) and blaming them for your failure. Missed Cross-Sell deals are always the other department's fault whilst Cross-Sell success is lauded in management PR memos but in reality results in a bun-fight over internal revenue allocation (if there ever was any).

Account Mapping - A process that involves explaining yet again to management why the world's biggest product users (a list they read in Forbes in the First Class lounge) are not the easiest or most profitable to deal with and are most often competitors rather than clients.

Staff Development Plans - Finding the least expensive and shortest course to send the fewest number of staff on covering a subject that will not give them aspirations or threaten management but can be used as a weapon against underachievers - "And even though we sent you on the self development course".

Human Resource Planning - Processing bodies as efficiently as possible whilst negotiating inconvenient local and international laws. See "Japanese whaling ship".

Team Motivational Planning - Guessing which day of the year will be quietest to buy the team a beer and sandwich.

Run a Tight Ship - Just read "Mutiny on the Bounty" for a fair description of life and inevitable outcome on a "tight ship".

Dependencies - A list to be ignored by management in a year's time once budgets are missed due to lack of whatever was on that list.

Cost Allocation - A very large number that you have no control of that is deducted from your profit centre to be given in its near entirety to the IT department in order to guarantee that your technology remains firmly 15 years behind that employed in your village shop.

Travel Policy - An algorithm (or virus) developed by travel agents as complex as any used in weather forecasting. Run by your institution to generate maximum inconvenience for the traveller at costs far in excess of those available online to the rest of the population whilst somehow managing to report "cost savings" to management.

Performance Measures - Probably the cleverest structured product your institution has ever dreamed up. Fashioned on a Las Vegas slot machine, it beams "Play Me" enticingly in bright lights yet achieving a payout involves getting at least 12 bells in a row.