Every business advice resource you've ever read tells you to do quarterly planning. Most small business owners nod along and then don't do it — not because they don't believe it matters, but because the version they've been shown requires two days offsite, a whiteboard, a facilitated agenda, and a level of organizational readiness they don't currently have.
That version is fine if you have it. But if you don't, here's a version that works for the rest of us.
Annual plans are too long. Things change. The priorities you set in January are often irrelevant by April, but you're still nominally committed to them because they were 'the plan.' Monthly plans are too short. You can't move anything meaningful in a month if you're also running the business.
"Three to five rocks. Not thirty. The constraint is the point — it forces you to choose what actually matters most."
Ninety days is long enough to accomplish something real and short enough that the plan can stay connected to reality. It's also a natural human work rhythm — three months of focused effort on a small number of priorities is genuinely achievable for most leadership teams.
You don't need two days. You need three hours and the right questions. Here's the structure I use with clients:
First hour: review. What did we say we were going to accomplish last quarter? What actually happened? Be honest. Don't grade on a curve. The review is only useful if it's accurate.
Second hour: landscape. What's changed in the business since last quarter? What are customers telling us? What are we seeing in the numbers? Where are we feeling the most friction? What opportunities are we not pursuing because we don't have capacity?
Third hour: commitments. Based on what we know, what are the three to five most important things to accomplish in the next ninety days? Not the thirty most important things. Three to five. These are your rocks — the priorities that are meaningful enough to track weekly and important enough that you'll feel the difference if they get done.
Everyone on the leadership team has rocks, not just the founder. A rock without a named owner isn't a rock — it's a wish.
Rocks get reviewed weekly. If something is worth making a quarterly priority, it's worth sixty seconds of status update in your weekly meeting. On track or off track. That's it.
Rocks are outcome-based, not activity-based. 'Hire a sales manager' is a rock. 'Conduct interviews' is not — that's just a task that might or might not lead to the outcome you actually want.
The last two weeks of each quarter is the right window. Not the last day — give yourself time to actually finish the current quarter's work before you've mentally moved to the next one. Not the first week of the new quarter — you lose momentum.
Block the time now. Put it on the calendar before this quarter ends. That's the part most people skip, and it's the reason most people end up doing their quarterly planning six weeks into the quarter — which means they've already lost six weeks.