My quarterly planning process

Whether you’re a solopreneur or running a bigger team, working to a plan is critical if you want to achieve your goals in the fastest, most stress free way possible.

Long-winded, rigid business planning may be a thing of the past, but that doesn’t mean all forms of planning should go out the window.

In this post I’m going to share the quarterly planning process I use in my business and have helped countless other founders implement with incredible results.

This process works just as well, whether you run a product or service based business.

The benefits of working to a plan

When I ask a new client why they aren’t working to a plan, i.e. one that is written down and referred to daily, the most common response is that it would take up time to stop and create it. And then more time managing it going forwards.

But, when done right, planning actually has the opposite effect. 

It saves you an immense amount of time - and stress too. Here’s why.

You keep your eye on what’s most important

Let’s be real. No-one building a business ever has time to do everything.

In fact, we usually have time to do about 20% of what we want to. If we’re lucky!

So it’s critical that the time, energy and money you do have is spent on the right things. 

Working to a structured plan helps to ensure you’re keeping that focus on the thing that will really move the needle today.

You don’t get distracted

In the ever turbulent world of business, there are always 100 new things crossing your ‘desk’. 

It can be hard to know what to say yes and no to and when.

When you have a clearly thought out plan, that’s laser focussed on what’s important RIGHT NOW, it’s incredibly easy to assess these new shiny objects and decide if they fit into today’s plan or need to be put aside for tomorrow.

Everyone is on the same page

Whether you work alone or not, there will be times that you need to communicate with others about your business.

Having a plan makes it incredibly easy to show what the priorities are and why.

And with everyone pulling in the same direction, progress happens far easier.

You can track and review progress

It’s incredibly important to both your progress and your mental state to be able to see what has been done, what went well, what didn’t and learn from it in order to move forward.

Against a well structured plan you can do this with ease and be constantly boosting the feeling that you’re making genuine progress.

You’re actually more adaptable

People have a tendency to feel like planning means being rigid, but it’s actually quite the opposite.

When something happens that causes you to need to make a change in the business, through your plan, you can see exactly what this change will effect and how to implement it.

You don’t go insane and burn out

Sorry to tell you this but you and your team, if you have one, are not robots with a never-ending life source. I know, it sucks.

But the reality is that you can only do so much.

A honed in plan takes into account the resources you have at your disposal and makes sure they’re being maxed out, without going overboard.

And if the main resource is people then this is especially critical.

An introduction to OKRs

Whilst my planning process is not pure OKRs, it is rooted in this mindset and so it helps to have an understanding of what they are and why they’re so effective.

OKRs stands for Objectives and Key Results. They were introduced to the world by Andy Grove, the former CEO of Intel, who went on to help monsters such as Google implement them.

OKRs are a goal-setting framework used to align business goals and objectives with overall strategy. I.e. they make sure that the work you’re doing is actually moving you towards your goal.

This is why they are so effective. As I set up my plan for the quarter ahead, it’s all tied back to what I’m trying to achieve in the long run.

And this is critical to achieving the best results.

Here’s how it works. The objective is the overarching goal that you’re trying to achieve. The key results tell you what needs to have happened in order for you to know that the objective is on its way to being met.

I have one further level under key results, that I’ll explain in a mo.

But as you can see, everything flows from the objective, so you know that you’re spending your resources on the stuff that really matters. Always.

My planning process

The first time you do this, it might take a little while but that’s not a bad thing. The whole process makes you critically think about your business and what will really make it grow.

And after that initial exercise it becomes a smooth process going forward, that takes very little time to manage.

Step 1: Grab the template

I’ve created a blank version of my quarterly planning doc in Google Sheets for you to make a copy of to use.

Grab this to see the plan visually as we go through the steps of setting it up.

Step 2: Set your objectives

In order to be able to use this framework, you need to know what your overarching objectives are.

This needs to come from one step even higher: your mission.

Whether you’ve written it down or not, you know what your mission is. If you haven’t taken the time to write it down, do it now.

Your mission is your ‘what’, i.e. what are you doing / building?

And in this same way, your objectives become your ‘how’ - how are you delivering on your mission.

I pick 4-5 core objectives that will show I’m on the right track to achieve my mission.

For example: let’s say you have an eco toothbrush business, and your mission is to get as many people switching to eco toothbrushes as possible.

Your objectives might be:

1. Make x number of people aware of the product (awareness)

2. Make the product available to buy in x number of places (availability)

3. Build a happy, customer community of x (reputation)

4. Build a strong, stable business (sustainability)

These can be number-driven or not - it’s up to you.

What matters is that they are the absolute key things that will drive you towards success on your mission.

You also shouldn’t want to change them too often. As they should remain relevant as the business grows, even if you change the numbers as you go.

Step 3: determine your key results

Against each of your objectives, list 3-5 results you need to see in order to know your objectives are being met.

Try and make these punchy, so it forces you to push yourself throughout the quarter. It doesn’t matter if you achieve them - it matters that you try.

Also try to make these number driven, as this helps hugely with being able to reflect back and plan for the next quarter.

Step 4: list out the tasks required to achieve your key results

This is the actual, actionable things you can do on a daily basis to work towards achieving your goals. They can be as small or big as you like, but need to be very relatable for you / your team.

Against each task, list the owner of the task. You’ll use this each week to check in on progress.

This is effectively going to be your to-do list each week.

Step 5: estimate the timeline

Against each of the 13 weeks ahead, now highlight the cells to give an idea of when each task will be worked on.

Some will run for a number of weeks, some will happen once, others will be monthly.

Shade the cells to show when you need to focus on each one - this will help ensure you’re not trying to do everything all at once and keep you on track.

Step 6: actively use it every week / day

This is now your key tool in where to focus your efforts each day. Use it to stay on track.

Every week, review the progress made against the plan and give each task a RAG status (red, amber, green) to show if it’s on track, at risk or falling behind.

This will help you to focus even more the next week, and keep things on track.

To wrap up

Hopefully you can see that this is both insanely effective and also easy to implement.

It really doesn’t take that long and saves you a tonne of time and stress when you start doing it.

So, carve out a little time over the next few weeks and start putting yours together for the upcoming quarter.

I guarantee you’ll be glad you did.

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As ever, if you want more hands-on support in launching and growing your business reach out to me about 1:1 coaching. There’s really nothing you can’t do with the right support.