♟️ Three Strategy Horizons
📈 Double Your Business
🔮 Plans Can Be Reset
♟️ Three Strategy Horizons
The end of year is a busy time for strategic planning, especially at Sticky Branding. I am sprinting until the holidays working with our clients on their 2025 growth strategies.
One of the key challenges of strategic planning is separating the needs of the now with the vision of the future. It’s easy to conflate the two, which makes the planning process incredibly frustrating and stressful.
To deal with this reality, I find it valuable to shift the strategic planning process into 3 Strategy Horizons.
Horizon 1: 10X Vision
Think bigger to grow your brand. Instead of simply looking at incremental, achievable growth targets, take a bigger view.
What would your business look like at 10 times its current size?
A 10X Vision creates a mental image of where the organization is going and why. Gaining clarity at 10X makes it easier to choose priorities in the next horizons.
Horizon 2: 3X Plan
Every time a business triples in size it fundamentally changes. These are your growth plateaus.
Your 3X Plan is your investment horizon. It defines the infrastructure — such as people, systems, technology, products, and customers — you will need to acquire, develop, or invest in to operate at the next level.
Horizon 3: 1 Year Action Plan
The 1 Year Action Plan is based on the 3X Plan. This is where you convert the strategy into executable chunks:
- What are you going to achieve this year?
- Where do you need to invest a disproportionate amount of resources to advance toward your 3X Plan?
- How are you going to achieve your objectives?
An effective 1 Year Action Plan clearly defines your company’s strategic priorities to grow the business.
As you prioritize your 2025 plans, work to get clear on all three strategy horizons. My mantra is “clear thinking drives results.”
One Stat to Watch
74%
U.S. CEO optimism hit record highs in November, according to Chief Executive’s November CEO Confidence Index. 74% of respondents expect revenues to increase in 2025, and 68% expect profits to increase.
📈 Double Your Business
Albert Einstein was a big believer in compound interest. He called it the eighth wonder of the world and the greatest mathematical discovery of all time.
The Rule of 72 is a simple calculation to determine how many years it will take to double the size of your business:
72 / Growth Rate = Years to Double
It’s simple math: If your business is growing at a compounding rate of 15% per year, it will double in size in 5 years (4.8 to be exact). At 30% compounding growth, your company will double in size in 2.5 years. At 5%, you’ve got a 14 year journey ahead of you.
The concept of compound growth is fascinating because 15% growth is not that daunting for a mid-sized company, or is it?
15% growth is pretty attainable when you’re small, but the larger you get the more compound growth gets in your way. For instance, at $5 million in revenue you need an additional $750,000 next year to achieve 15% growth. Whereas, at $500 million you’ve got to find a whopping $75 million in new revenue.
As you set your targets this year, consider the infrastructure you will need to achieve your goals. Growth is a function of capabilities. Do you have the business model, infrastructure, and brand to support your compounding growth rate?
🔮 Plans Can Be Reset
One of the hardest things for a leadership team to face is a strategy that won’t deliver.
You may have set an annual growth target, but halfway through the year realize there’s no way you’re going to achieve it. This is a humbling moment that can throw the entire strategic plan into question.
This leaves the team with a choice:
- Power through and hope things will get better in the second half; or
- reframe the strategy.
Hope and luck are not a strategy. It’s ok to reframe your strategy, it’s actually the best option.
No one has a crystal ball. You set your plans with the best information you have at the time. As you evaluate progress through the year, you may have to change expectations or even change course.
True strategic transformations require deep honesty. If you miss your targets, assess where your company is at and what it will take to get back on track.
Sometimes this can be achieved through more discipline and focus to close a revenue gap. Other times you may have to slow down, reset, and come back with a new plan based on what you know today.
Strategy is a process, not an event. The more you work on it, the better it gets.
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