Strategy · Organising to Scaling
Your strategy on one page
You know why your strategy fits on one page, which boxes to fill in at your phase, and in what order.
Does this sound familiar?
- You ask three people on your leadership team where the company will be in three years, and you get three different answers.
- There's a forty-page strategy document. It was written for the bank, and nobody has opened it since.
- Every away day produces a new list of ideas. A month later everyone's back to doing what they always did.
Who it's for, and when
For founders who carry their strategy in their head, or in a long document nobody reads, and who want the whole team heading in the same direction. It starts to matter once you're no longer at the table for every decision.
The model
A strategy only works once your team knows it. Nobody reads a long plan. One page you can put on the wall, bring out in a meeting and explain to a new colleague in ten minutes. It also makes you choose: if it doesn't fit on the page, you don't do it.
The canvas has two parts. The strategic foundation says who you are and where you want to go, and that rarely changes. The strategic planning says where you'll be in three years and what you'll achieve this year, and you rewrite it every year. Harnish calls setting strategy and planning two separate activities. Do them in two sessions, the foundation first.
Not every box makes sense at every growth phase. In Searching you don't pin anything down yet: you don't know who your customer is, and a three-year plan rests on assumptions. In Proving, your sandbox, your customer and your core values start to take shape. From Organising onwards you fill in the foundation, and from Growing onwards the three-year goals. Each box below says from when.
Verne Harnish's One-Page Strategic Plan (Mastering the Rockefeller Habits, 2002; Scaling Up, 2014). For three years out, Boldcaster uses Shannon Susko's 3HAG (The 3HAG Way, 2018), and adds DNA and the exit goal.
Core values
Foundation. What behaviour do you see in your best people? A first version from Proving, settled in Organising.
Core values that guide behaviourPurpose
Foundation. Why does your company exist? From Organising, once you've found the why.
Why you existBHAG
Foundation. The big goal for ten to twenty-five years. From late Organising; before that, a pivot can still turn everything over.
The BHAG: one big goal with a finish lineProfit per X
Foundation. Which unit do you make your money on? Being profitable per customer already counts in Proving; you steer on it from Organising.
Profit per X: what you make your money onSandbox
Foundation. Where do you play, and what do you say no to? This is the work of Proving: choosing the segment that responds.
Your sandboxCore competence
Foundation. What are you better at than anyone, even when you're not in the room? From Organising.
What you do better than anyoneCore customer
Foundation. Which customer are you there for? A hypothesis in Searching, settled in Proving.
Your core customerDNA
Foundation. What you as founder put into the company and refuse to let go of. From Organising, as you're in the room less.
The DNA: the soul of your companyBrand promise
Foundation. One promise your customer can check, with what you do when you break it. Test it in Proving, settle it from Organising.
A brand promise with a guaranteeExit goal
Foundation. An amount and a year for the value of your company. From Organising, and the standing question in Scaling.
Your exit goal3HAG
Planning. What your company looks like in three years, in a few sentences. From Growing.
3HAG: your company in three yearsSuccess strategies
Planning. Three to five choices that set you apart and reinforce each other. They emerge in Proving, and you settle them from Organising.
Success strategiesThree-year objectives
Planning. A handful of numbers for three years from now that fit together. From Growing.
Three-year objectivesObjectives for this year
Planning. Two or three numbers for this year, from where you are now to a target. From Proving, once you're tracking your first KPIs.
Objectives for this yearPitfalls
Putting everything on it
Every idea gets a spot, because it's all important. Then the page is full and it no longer makes any choices. Cut until it fits.
Filling in the canvas before the market has spoken
A BHAG and a three-year plan while you don't yet know who buys twice gives you a nice sheet you can bin at the first pivot. Fill in what your phase allows, and the rest later.
Watch and read
The creator of the One-Page Strategic Plan on setting strategy and planning as two separate activities: the difference between the foundation and the planning.
Watch on YouTubeA Dutch Scaling Up coach walks through the whole plan, with tips for making your own. In Dutch.
Watch on YouTubeRead
Scaling Up: How a Few Companies Make It...and Why the Rest Don't
Verne Harnish · 2014 · ISBN 9780986019593
This is where you'll find the updated One-Page Strategic Plan, with the BHAG, core values and brand promise on one sheet. Published in Dutch as Scaling up: de groeiformule (Business Contact, 2016, ISBN 9789047008682).
View the bookApply it
- 1
Choose which boxes to fill in now
Put the map above next to your growth phase. Only fill in the boxes your phase allows. An empty box is better than one you'll turn over again in six months.
The five growth phases - 2
Plan two sessions, not one
One for the foundation, with your leadership team or the three to five people who carry the company with you. A second, a few weeks later, for the planning. That gives the foundation time to sink in.
- 3
Set a date for the review
One moment a year, in the diary. That's when you test the foundation and rewrite the planning. In between, you test decisions against the page and leave the page itself alone.
Examples
An engineering consultancy
The leadership team put the page up in the canteen. When a project manager wanted to buy new drawing software, he checked the purchase against this year's objectives himself and put it on the leadership team's agenda. He used to ask the owner in the corridor.
A software company in Proving
The founders wanted to fill in the whole canvas in one afternoon, with a BHAG and three-year goals. Halfway through, it turned out they didn't know which customer they were there for. They filled in only the sandbox and the core customer, and came back six months later for the rest.
Do this in your own business
Everything up to here is free. What you fill in for your own business, you keep in Boldcaster.
- Go to your strategy canvas. On the canvas, each box has a Lesson link that opens that box's lesson alongside it.
- You assign the lesson to your team and see who has done it.
- The quiz counts towards your progress, and you see which lesson comes next.
Four weeks free. You'll land straight in this lesson.
Quiz
4 situations. You need 4 of 4 right. You can try again at any time.
1.You have three customers and your proposition still changes every month. An adviser wants to fill in the whole canvas with you, including a BHAG. What do you do?
2.Your leadership team starts the strategy session with next year's revenue, then writes a purpose to match. What goes wrong?
3.Your canvas no longer fits on one page: every box has a paragraph. What do you do?
4.After a bad quarter, a member of the leadership team wants to lower the BHAG. What do you say?
Nothing is saved here. In the app, the quiz counts towards your progress.
Read next
- Core values that guide behaviour · You write down three to five core values, each with the behaviour you want and the behaviour you don't, and you know how to use them when you hire and review people.
- Rock, OKR or project: which do you choose? · You put every piece of work in the right type: a rock, an OKR, a project, a KPI or a standalone task.
- Closing the year and planning the next · You close the year with two days in which the leadership team puts four quarters side by side, tests the strategy and chooses what stops, and goes home with the priorities for the first quarter.
Not sure where to start? Take the growth scan