This one-page document transforms the way you think about and approach scaling your company. You take one sheet of paper, and break it down into three main focus areas for the quarter. You then decide on criteria for success for each focus area. (“What specifically needs to happen for you to feel successful on this focus area this quarter?”) Finally, you’ll list out the action steps that allow you to accomplish this criteria of success for this focus area this quarter.
When putting together your plan, you’ll probably need to break down each focus area into five to seven action steps and milestones. So over the course of a quarter, you have roughly 15-20 action steps you need to keep track of, which can be done in a variety of ways. A task list in your email program, a to-do list on an app, a notebook in Evernote, or perhaps even a paperbound journal.
While our business coaching clients use a customized web app to do this, you can use an online tool like Trello (or even our free, easy-to-use business action plan template). Here is how our marketing director, Kim, plans her quarter via the Trello app.
With these five task lists Kim is able to plan her week and use her focus time on high value activities. At the end of each week, she will pull items from the quarter projects list directly into her current task list, making them a focus for the upcoming week. Nothing gets left behind and she is able to work on her quarterly action plan in manageable chunks.