In a lot of the company workshops and training I run, I end by asking the delegates to create a plan.
I’m a big believer that executive education without action is incomplete. I can bring the knowledge, the skills and the new concepts, but it’s action that turns them into results. Much of what I teach is the practical side of management, and without someone applying it back at work, the learning tends to fade by the following Monday.
The plan I ask for is a 3-12-6. Here it is as a set of questions and answers, with three small animations.
What is the 3-12-6 framework?
Three goals, for three timeframes: three years, twelve months and six weeks. Each one builds on the one above it, so the six-week goal is a step towards the twelve-month goal, which is a step towards the three-year goal.
Three horizons, drawn to scale
The worked example I use in workshops runs like this:
- Three years: double revenue by expanding our service lines and entering new markets.
- Twelve months: launch three new service lines and achieve $1 million in sales from them.
- Six weeks: launch the first marketing campaign and book ten discovery calls with prospects.
Why set them in that order?
Because the long-term goal gives everything else its direction. Start with three years, and the twelve-month and six-week goals have something to line up behind. Start with six weeks, and you tend to get a busy month that leads nowhere in particular.
I think of it as a golden thread that runs from the company’s vision and mission all the way down to what someone does this week.
Set it top down, deliver it bottom up
The work runs the other way. Nobody delivers a three-year goal directly. They deliver a run of six-week goals, and those add up to the twelve months, which add up to the three years.
Why six weeks?
It’s long enough to get something real done and short enough that nobody can put it off. A team can see the end of six weeks from the start, which keeps the goal concrete and the effort up.
Quick wins matter too. A team that hits its first six-week goal has proof the plan works, and that’s the best motivation I know for the next one.
General George Patton put the idea more forcefully in his memoir: a good plan violently executed now is better than a perfect plan next week (Barry Popik, quoting War As I Knew It, 1947).
What makes each goal a good one?
Each one should be SMART: specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound. I’ve written a separate piece on SMART goals.
The six-week goal is where this matters most. “Launch a social media campaign” describes an activity. “Launch the first campaign and book ten discovery calls” says what success looks like, so in six weeks’ time you’ll know whether you got there.
Where do the goals come from?
From a look at the world the company works in, before anyone writes a goal down. The frameworks I teach for this are PESTLE, for the big outside forces, SWOT, for the company’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats, and Porter’s Five Forces, for how hard the competition is.
A three-year goal that ignores what those turn up is only a wish.
What happens after the first six weeks?
You review it and set the next one. What worked, what didn’t, and what the next six weeks need to deliver for the twelve-month goal to stay on track.
A year of six-week goals
That rhythm is the part most plans are missing. What gets measured gets done, so track the few numbers that show whether the twelve-month goal is on course, and change direction early rather than late. The three-year goal deserves a proper look once a year, or sooner if the world changes under it.
Why does this matter more now?
Because AI makes it easy to produce a plan, and easy to produce a lot of activity. It doesn’t decide which three years you’re aiming at, or whether this six weeks moved you closer. That’s still the job of the people in the room, and it’s what I ask delegates to write down before they leave.
This guide is step 5 of a strategy toolkit: five tools, in order, that take a team from what’s changing in the world to a plan with dates on it.
Sources: Barry Popik, A good plan today is better than a perfect plan tomorrow, quoting Patton, G. S. (1947) War As I Knew It, Houghton Mifflin; Wikipedia, SWOT analysis; Wikipedia, Porter’s five forces analysis.