What Are Your Three Big Moves?

At a recent on-board­ing train­ing ses­sion for new strat­e­gy advi­sors join­ing our team, we shared and dug into how we cre­ate val­ue for clients, and our per­spec­tives and insights about strate­gic planning.

And we talked about how many strate­gic advi­sors believe that the only thing that real­ly mat­ters is the annu­al plan – and, if there’s time, a three-year plan.

A Dif­fer­ent Approach

We take a dif­fer­ent approach. We believe the three-year plan for any busi­ness is the most impor­tant and final out­put of any good strate­gic think­ing and work.

Think of it like dri­ving a boat on a lake. A one-year plan puts your focus just over the tip of the bow. It’s a short-term, tac­ti­cal-think­ing tun­nel view that caus­es dra­mat­ic over-cor­rec­tions, if you hit a prob­lem you didn’t see coming.

Com­pare that to a three-year plan which enables you to look 1000 feet ahead and at the hori­zon or point on the shore you want to reach. With more infor­ma­tion and con­text, and a strong ref­er­ence point by which to cal­i­brate, you’re less like­ly to get lost.

Three Big Moves

A three-year plan con­tains your strate­gic think­ing about the big moves that will have the biggest impact on your business:

• Finan­cial tar­gets to dou­ble the prof­itabil­i­ty of your busi­ness (to ensure it’s twice as strong or capa­ble of sup­port­ing growth) and
• Three big moves in invest­ments, improve­ments or growth dri­vers that you’re going to work on relent­less­ly, over the next three years, in order to achieve your finan­cial targets.

I say ​“three big moves” because it’s about keep­ing things sim­ple and boil­ing down to the strate­gic moves that make the biggest impact.

Not a shop­ping list of things that you could do or would be nice to do.

Once you know those three big moves — each of which are prob­a­bly going to con­tribute or dri­ve towards 100% of the future prof­it — you’ve got a great plan.

Then, the one-year plan is about how you imple­ment them.

The Chal­lenge

• How good is your three-year plan?
• How clear are your three big moves, over the next three years?

Oth­er Blogs

• Strate­gic Lead­er­ship vs Tac­ti­cal Deci­sion Making
• Strate­gic Plan­ning: 15 min­utes, 15 months, 15 years
• How Dis­ci­plined is your 20-Mile March

Old­er Podcasts

• Five Things that Lead to a Bad Strate­gic Plan
• How to Get the Most from your Strate­gic Plan­ning Framework