Present the Business Case
Presenting a solid business case to your executives.
Starter Questions
Do you know what your organization requires for presenting a business case?
What problem is your business case going to solve?
What are the main points your business case must address?
Preparing to Write the Business Case
Everything you’ve done in Parts 1 through 5 was prework in preparation for writing the actual business case. This article will walk you through how to pull all that relevant information together into a seamless deliverable that you can present to your executives and share with other stakeholders.
Note that every company has different expectations for what a business case should include. As part of your work in Part 1, you should also learn how your company formats and presents new ideas. That is an important prerequisite to moving forward.
Regardless of the specifics of your organization, every business case should include the following:
Purpose: What is the purpose of the business case? What are you trying to accomplish? What problem are you trying to solve?
Findings: Where are your findings? What’s going wrong now at your organization and what ae the specific facts and observations? What are the data-driven results of things going wrong?
Opportunity: Articulate the positive opportunity before you. How incredible is it to have an opportunity to become a better organization? To improve your people and processes and become more efficient? (You’ve identified the means and methods to fix it!)
Risks: What are the risks if your company doesn’t approve your business case and invest in quality?
Actions: What are you going to do? (These are the solutions you identified in Part 4.) Specifically point out that these actions are not just your opinion of what needs to happen. Instead, note that these actions are the result of thoughtful research and analysis from across the organization.
Data: Depending on the communication style of your executives, you should have supplemental charts to illustrate how you came up with the data and what it specifically shows. Having this as a backup is helpful as some executives are data-driven and want the details, while others prefer to stay high level and get to the point.
Below is an outline for the first draft of your business case.
Suggested Business Case Outline
Aim: What is the business case attempting to do? What problem is it going to solve? How will quality tactically help your company achieve its business goals?
Example: This report is intended to serve as a starting point and draft vision for the future of xyz’s quality program and is thus subject to change as we continue to investigate and reflect.
Summary of Findings: In one sentence, what is the biggest problem?
Example: The absence of recognized importance of the existing program coupled with lacking definition of quality, culture, and regular coaching results in an underutilized program.
Specific Observations (factual, numerical):
Problem 1
Problem 2
Problem 3
Opportunities
Opportunity 1
Opportunity 2
Opportunity 3
Risk Analysis (What will happen if nothing is done?)
Risk 1
Risk 2
Risk 3
Business Actions (top items from interviews, based on capacity for change)
Item 1
Item 2
Item 3
…
Supplemental Data
Provide as needed, for backup only.
Business Case Essentials
Specific to quality – and regardless of how you present the business case and what the findings are – there are several discussion topics you must cover with your executive leaders.
Decide on a Centralized or Decentralized Program. Regardless of whether you’re creating a new quality program at your organization or enhancing an existing one, you need to decide if the program will be centralized or decentralized. I wrote about this approach and my own thoughts in greater detail here.
Establish Realistic Expectations on the Timeline. Be very clear with your executive leaders that implementing a new or enhanced quality program – or any new program initiative – is a 2 to 4-year commitment. This does not happen overnight. (For reference, I am about 3 years into the enhancement of an existing program, and there is at least one more year to go.) There must be a complete turnover of all the projects in your portfolio before the culture shift starts to take place.
Inform Leadership They Must Own the New Program. They have to own it. The very definition of “executive leadership” is long-term thinking.
Practice and Preparation
Practice with your support network. Your support network is the group of individuals you identified in Part 4 who were excited about what you were doing. Keep them in mind. Go back to them and ask the questions below. It should be shaped around your company and the people who use it daily. This is the best way to build a quality culture and garner avid participation and support.
What do you think of this business plan?
Do you know this executive? What motivates them? How would you articulate these points?
Do you think this would work?
What else am I missing?
Does this solve the problems you shared with me?
Finally, before you present, have others read your business case and make as many revisions as you need to make it unstoppable. The business case I presented (memo form) went through 12 revisions before I sent it to executive leadership.
Presenting the Business Case
You’re finally ready to present the business case to your executives. Make sure you’re aware of the process for presenting a business case at your organization. (For example, is it an actual presentation, or a memo? Or something else?) Regardless of the actual format, below are a few tips for success.
Be brilliant, be brief. At the executive level, there is a lot going on. You need to have your talking points focused and honed in. Speak clearly and succinctly.
Personally address the concerns they previously shared with you. Your business case should already account for their concerns, but also be sensitive to it if their feedback or concerns isn’t what’s really happening in the organization. (Which is why you need to gather a large enough sample size in your conversations from Part 4. When your executive says “But I’m very concerned about xyz,” you can respond constructively: “I understand your concerns. I did talk with ### of individuals across the company and that’s not what I discovered. Tell me more about your thoughts.”) You’re not telling your executive that they’re wrong; you’re instead presenting different information and asking that they help you understand their perspective.
Be open and focus on speaking their language. Here’s an example of adjusting your language based on the perspective of the executive.
Context: How your program will make the superintendent’s job easier. You need to articulate how the program achieves that.
Response for the Financially Focused Executive: This program will save every superintendent 2 hours a week. At a bill rate of $150 per hour, that’s $xyz savings per year (or per project).
Response for the People or Client-Focused Executive: This program will save every superintendent 2 hours per week by reducing the number of meetings they are in. That’s two additional hours where they can be out on the job site instead, making sure the work is going in correctly, or walking with our clients – listening to them, understanding what they really need.
In both situations, you’re saying the same thing, but you’re saying it in two different ways – adjusting your communication style to that of your executive. That is a very important skill to be successful in any career.