Your Step-by-Step Guide to Crafting a Three-to-Five-Year Strategic Vision
Looking Back from the Future to Look Ahead
The discipline of strategic planning is not a one-time project to complete but an ongoing discipline to prayerfully sustain, year after year. It is like a muscle that will grow over time if exercised. Each year, you can strengthen your efforts and become more proficient in different aspects of the planning process.
C12’s BaaM Strategic Planning Framework describes the key elements and sequence required for creating a strategic plan—anchoring in biblical core principles, defining a three-to-five-year strategic vision, identifying annual strategic objectives, crafting an annual primary objective, formulating measurable goals and key performance indicators (KPIs), and developing action plans.
The table below provides an overview of the initial and annual steps of C12’s five-step strategic planning process:
In this article, we will examine the first element in the “look ahead” step of C12’s five-step strategic planning process. To learn more about the rest of the steps in C12’s five-step strategic planning process, download our free Strategic Planning Guide.
Look Ahead
Your preparatory work from the previous steps in C12’s five-step strategic planning process lays the necessary groundwork to confidently establish your future course of action. You gain clarity by “looking inward,” “looking back,” “looking up,” and “looking around” to assess your company’s current state. Based on these analyses, you can “look ahead” and develop an effective strategic plan for the future.
Defining a Three-to-Five-Year Strategic Vision
Your first step in looking ahead is to define a three-to-five-year strategic vision encompassing ideal yet realistic targets for the company’s future over a medium-range time frame.
The three-to-five-year strategic vision should include one or more desired outcomes for each area of C12’s 5-Point Alignment Matrix:
Developing a Three-to-Five-Year Strategic Vision
Planning for the future can seem perplexing. As a leader, you know the infinite variables and uncertainties that can positively or negatively impact your plans. In his book, The New Leadership Literacies, Bob Johansen suggests that while the next 12 months may be uncertain, you can gain more clarity by looking three to five years ahead. Johansen advises that by considering longer-term trends, you can better map out the steps needed to prepare for the future.
To do so, you start by envisioning what you would like your business to look like in five years, then three years, and finally one year. Working backward from this vision helps you gain clarity in developing next year’s plan. This approach is known as creating a three-to-five-year strategic vision.
In this video, Mike Sharrow delves deeper into the process of developing a three-to-five-year strategic vision. By looking back from three to five years in the future, you can reverse engineer a pathway for your company in a way that informs present priorities and guides near-term decisions.
Your three-to-five-year strategic vision will develop in three steps:
- Brainstorm specific strategic initiatives and desired outcomes for organizational performance for each area of the 5PAM.
- Narrow the list of initiatives and outcomes to the most important ones. This conversation may lead to disagreements among different members of the team. Take time to pray through the decisions. Encourage the team to frame the discussion within the context of the company’s mission, vision, and core values, rather than focusing solely on pet projects or narrow departmental needs.
- Arrive at a consensus on this medium-range time frame’s most important initiatives and outcomes. This is the strategic vision, clarifying what you must achieve in the next three to five years to stay on track.
To plan effectively for next year and beyond, download our free worksheet, Look Ahead – Developing a Three-to-Five-Year Strategic Vision.
By developing a three-to-five-year strategic vision, you can create a clear roadmap for achieving your company’s future goals, ensuring that each year builds on the progress of the previous one.
Questions to Consider
As you begin developing a three-to-five-year strategic vision with your leadership team, here are questions you can ask to help formulate challenging but realistic goals for organizational growth and performance:
- As much as you can plan for it, where do you want to be in three to five years? What does that look like in terms of volume, revenue, and locations?
- What information do you need but currently lack to achieve your vision?
- What existing capabilities must be deployed (or better utilized) to support the reality you envision?
- What new platforms, teams, capabilities, or products must be developed to support the reality you envision?
- What questions, solutions, and/or innovations do you need to discover to support your strategic vision?
A Strategic Shift
After its founding in 2016, Sunday Cool experienced rapid growth. Leadership reacted to immediate tasks rather than investing in long-term planning, leading to burnout and putting the company’s success at risk. Eventually, Steve Hooper recognized the need for a strategic approach and began developing a team to engage in strategic planning.
The transition from tactical survival to strategic growth was a defining moment for Sunday Cool. By adopting a strategic planning process, Steve and his team were able to focus on sustainable growth, improve communication across the organization, and establish measurable KPIs, changing the course of Sunday Cool forever.
Putting It All Together
Once a three-to-five-year strategic vision is in place, your team will review it in subsequent years, reflecting on progress and making updates as needed. In the final year, your team will develop a new three-to-five-year strategic vision for the next medium-range time frame.
The three-to-five-year strategic vision will inform your annual strategic objectives, annual primary objective, and goals/KPIs. The annual primary objective and supporting goals/KPIs make up your action plan. Download our free Strategic Planning Guide to learn more about developing your annual strategic objectives, annual primary objective, goals/KPIs, and action plan.
Strategic Planning as Responsible Stewardship
Whatever business environments you face, C12’s five-step strategic planning process will allow you to step confidently into the future. Instead of merely reacting to circumstances, you will be prepared. You are a steward of your business; God is the Owner. Whether you are a veteran planner or a novice, you can leverage the resources God has given you to craft strategic plans and execute them to build great businesses for a greater purpose.
C12 Business Forums provides an architected environment for Christian business leaders that integrates work, life, and leadership transformation. To learn more about C12’s approach to Christ-centered business leadership, find a C12 Business Forum near you.
About the Author
C12 Editorial Team
C12 is the largest peer-learning organization for Christian CEOs, business owners, and executives and a leader in the marketplace ministry movement. Located in over 160 major metro areas across the United States, Brazil, Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan, and South Africa, C12 serves businesses with 10 to 10,000+ employees and annual revenues ranging from $2 million to $5 billion. C12 Business Forums provides an architected environment for Christian business leaders that integrates work, life, and leadership transformation. Led by full-time C12 Chairs—veterans of business with ownership or C-Suite experience—our CEO and Key Player Forums equip members with resources and tools to steward a BaaM (Business as a Ministry) vision to build great businesses for a greater purpose. For more information, please visit C12 Business Forums.
September 13, 2024