Field Guides / Operations

How do I plan my year so the important things actually get done?

Plan in layers and only ever work from one layer at a time. Once a year, take one to two days to look back, then write everything you want done in the next twelve months into one list, often 50 to 80 items. Each quarter, pull three to five priorities off that list (three if you're on your own, five once there are two of you) and put the rest away; each week, pick five goals from the quarter, and each day, three from the week. Every 90 days, review what got done and choose again.

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Why does the work that would grow the business keep sliding to next month?

The growth work keeps sliding because it lives in your head next to the client work, and the client work always has a date on it.

Structure will set you free. The first time I wrote everything down, I found a pile of things I'd forgotten I wanted to do, and the list kept growing. Thirty things that all feel important are hard to manage, so a plan also has to decide what you'll leave alone for the next ninety days.

How to plan your year: the method, step by step

Planning your year runs from one annual list down to the quarter, the week and the day, with a review every 90 days. The first five steps happen once a year. After that it's fifteen minutes on a Sunday and one sitting each quarter.

1. Book one to two days away from your desk. Mine took about a day and a half. For my quarterly plans I take the bike to the beach or a national park and write by hand. Start from your mission, the big goal three to five years out (Jim Collins calls it a big hairy audacious goal): reach, number and type of clients, revenue and profit. Everything on the list should move you towards it.
2. Look back before you look forward. Write your accomplishments first (creatives are hard on themselves, so give yourself the credit), then your lessons learned: the good, the bad and the aha moments. First plan, the last 12 months; after that, the last quarter. One of my standing lessons is to trust my gut: the job that sounds like a pain, taken anyway for a bit less money, always ends up a nightmare. One member spent four and a half weeks setting up his own storage server that a $500 hire would have done in a day: what are you doing yourself that you should pay for? If you've done the 12-month audit, bring its numbers here.
3. Score the business out of ten. Six statements, each written as the finished state:
   • Marketing: a fully functioning marketing system consistently delivering qualified leads.
   • Prospects: a consistent, measurable lead nurture process moving prospects into buyers.
   • Sales: a high-converting sales process, and you know your conversion ratio.
   • Clients: your clients buy repeatedly and are happy to refer you new business.
   • Delivery: you can run multiple productions at once without needing to be there.
   • Operations: your process is documented and systemised every step of the way.

   Low numbers are a benchmark to measure against in 90 days. Anything under five needs attention. I gave my own marketing a five, maybe a four. If operations is low, better systems is where to start.

4. Turn what you found into strategic issues. For each accomplishment, lesson and low score, ask: how do we [outcome], given that [obstacle]? Not every item has one, and don't solve anything yet. How do we generate more sales if there aren't enough hours in the day? How do we attract more leads if we have no marketing strategy?
5. Write the annual list, by department. Everything you want done in twelve months, under company, marketing, sales, admin, accounting and automation, production, and personal, even if you work alone. The list often runs to 50 to 80 items. Write the big ones as done, in the past tense, so you can tick them off: "Launched an engaging website." "Converted 25 leads per month." The personal column counts: you can't hit a target you can't see, so set priorities for health, energy, mind, spirit and love. Getting your weekends back covers that side.

6. Pick the quarter's priorities and put the annual list away. Pull three to five quarterly priorities (I call them TOPs, tactical operating priorities): three if you're on your own, five once there are two of you. Make each a bite-sized milestone. If the annual priority is 100 leads a month and you're on 40, this quarter's is 50, then 65, 85 and 100 by the fourth quarter. Write each as done, with a date, then break it into actions: "Our sales process is documented with a script converting at 60 per cent" becomes record a sales call, document it, write the script, log every call to calculate the conversion rate. If you know the S.C.A.L.E. Method, take them from the discipline that's your constraint right now.

7. Every week, pick five, then three a day. On Sunday, take fifteen minutes. Copy last week's note, delete what's done, carry over what isn't, and pick five goals from the quarter's priorities. Tell someone what they are. Then pick three a day from the five. Calls, emails and something from the accountant will turn up regardless, so the three are only the strategic work. Keep Friday light for whatever rolls over. A goal doesn't come off the list until it's done.

8. Every 90 days, review and choose again. Repeat the look-back for the quarter, rescore the six statements, and judge revenue on the quarter's total (a slow January is common). Then open your Maybe Later file, where every idea that arrived mid-quarter has been waiting. Finish with next quarter's priorities and a date for the next review.

A worked example: from the Maybe Later file to a weekly podcast

Here's one of my own priorities going through the funnel.

The idea. We'd run a podcast in 2012, made about 18 episodes and ran out of steam. By 2018 people were asking for it again, so "we should do a podcast" went into the Maybe Later file.

The quarter. At the next quarterly planning it came out of the file as one of five priorities for the end of 2018, alongside hiring assistants, defining the brand and formalising the sales process.

The week. On my planner for the week of 26 November 2018, the podcast sat under "waiting on": an estimate from the company that would produce it.

The result. On a member call some time later, the podcast was getting up to episode 94.

My 2016 annual list also had a production consulting column, the one I had the least heart in. It got no quarterly priorities at all, and within two months we'd killed that line of work off completely, because the amount of work involved with those clients wasn't what I wanted to be doing.

The mistakes that undo it

Two mistakes undo the plan, and both come from asking too much of one quarter.

• Overloading the quarter. Going from 40 leads to 100 in one quarter probably means tripling your marketing, and you'd need the people and the money to resource it.
• Acting on every new idea the day it arrives. When I open my Maybe Later file at quarterly planning, it's amazing how many of them I look at and think, that's a terrible idea.

The rule of thumb for planning your year

Plan the year once, then never work from more than three to five priorities a quarter, five goals a week and three a day.

The benchmark: one to two days a year for the annual plan, fifteen minutes every Sunday for the week, and a review every 90 days. The question I keep on a label on my computer: is this a priority right now?

Hold yourself accountable

Which of these have you taken on or put in place recently?

• You have one annual list, split by department, written down outside your head.
• You know this quarter's priorities: three if you're on your own, five once there are two of you.
• You picked this week's five before Monday started.
• Your last quarterly review is dated, with this quarter's scores beside last quarter's.

Your one move this week

What's the one thing you can commit to implementing this week? If you're not sure, start here.

Put one to two planning days in the diary within the next month, away from your desk. Then spend thirty minutes tonight writing the first twenty items of your annual list under the six department headings, and take that list with you.

One thing executed every week creates 50 strategic moves a year.

Related tools and guides. Better systems: where to actually start, Getting your weekends back, Know your numbers, The S.C.A.L.E. Method.