In October 2010, Apple CEO Steve Jobs sent a short email that outlined Apple’s plans for 2011.

One might think that Apple, now the most valuable public company in the world valued at about $2.4 trillion, would have a hugely complicated plan with strategy statements requiring hundreds of pages to cover.

Not so…

Jobs 2011 consolidated plan consisted of only six major bullet points on one page:

  1. Who are we? (Vision)
  2. What do we do? (Mission)
  3. Post PC era (Strategy)
  4. 2011: Holy War with Google (Strategy)
  5. 2011: Year of the Cloud (Strategy)
  6. 2015: New Campus (Strategy)

So simple… yet so effective. Since then, Apple stock has risen from about $9 a share to $145… a growth of over 1600%.

Who can argue with that?

I’m sure there were detailed department plans to execute Job’s strategic vision… but the point is that midsized companies can take a page out of Steve Jobs’ playbook and significantly simplify their business planning to One Page, especially at the top leadership level!