A fundamental shift in business planning advice

Whenever someone told me to make a five-year plan or plan my entire year in detail, I tried. I did it for years. But it never really made sense to me.

If someone had asked me, at the beginning of 2020, what I thought my life would look like, I probably would have said: running a side hustle in Chile while still working in an office, saving for a house, and travelling once in a while.

What actually happened? I ended up living in Brazil, Thailand, and Spain. I started working remotely and part-time while travelling to many places I had never imagined visiting. None of that would have occurred to me back then—and my priorities changed along the way.

We do not know exactly what will happen next. So we cannot know exactly what will matter most to us in the future.

“The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” — Lao Tzu

As cliché as it sounds, it is often better to focus on one step at a time than to stare at the whole mountain ahead. It is simply more practical.

Why shorter cycles work

Shorter planning cycles often work better because they help teams make progress without becoming attached to plans that no longer reflect reality.

Several well-known approaches promote this idea:

• The 12 Week Year: Moran and Lennington’s framework breaks the year into 12-week cycles.
• 37signals: The makers of Basecamp argue that a six-week work cycle gives teams enough time to complete meaningful work without excessive planning overhead.
• Scrum: This agile framework uses short iterations—typically two to four weeks—with clear goals and deliverables.

Instead of creating an overwhelming list of tasks and pursuing a fixed goal no matter what, focus on implementing one meaningful thing at a time.

How to implement shorter cycles in your business

Step 1: Revisit your why

Review your vision and long-term goals. They should guide what you choose to do during each short-term cycle.

Step 2: Set a timeframe

Choose a timeframe that is long enough to produce something meaningful, but short enough to maintain momentum and avoid constant replanning.

Start with a cycle length that feels realistic, then adjust it later. You do not need to get it perfect from the beginning.

Step 3: Discuss what matters most

Bring your team together to discuss what should be improved next.

Do not arrive with an endless list of possible projects. Instead, ask each person to bring a small number of ideas that could genuinely move the business forward.

The discussion should focus on:

• the challenge or opportunity;
• why it matters now; and
• why the proposed work could have an impact.

Step 4: Decide what to work on

There are many ways to choose the next priority. Pick the approach that fits your team:

• Use your judgment: Sometimes a quick, experience-based decision is the right one. Not every choice needs a complex evaluation process.
• Use a scoring system: Create criteria and score each idea against them.
• Vote or rank options: Let team members evaluate the ideas and vote for their favourites.

Step 5: Commit and document

Assign one person responsibility for each initiative, and let them define what success looks like.

Document the decision somewhere visible: in an email, at the top of your project-management tool, on your intranet homepage, or simply as clearly assigned tasks.

Example

Imagine your support team has been receiving repeated complaints about uptime, connection issues, and system outages. They propose a project to strengthen operations.

At the same time, your account managers are repeatedly joining calls to show clients how to perform basic actions, such as raising a ticket or creating a request. They propose improving the client onboarding process.

You have also noticed that your team has been working too much. You propose setting up a capacity dashboard, improving time tracking, and giving people a way to signal whether they are overloaded or able to take on more clients.

Each group pitches a solution that fits the chosen timeframe. Rather than building a complex client-onboarding chatbot immediately, you could break the work into smaller steps:

• In a two-week cycle: Ask clients what they struggle with, or review past conversations and meetings to identify common issues.
• In a 30-day cycle: Identify the areas clients struggle with most, then begin recording videos and creating helpful documentation.
• In an eight-week cycle: Create a client wiki and decide where and when to surface documentation so clients can find it when they need it.

Then choose one priority through voting, a scoring process, or discussion. Make sure it still aligns with your long-term vision, and discard ideas that do not.

The place for long-term planning

This does not mean you cannot take on year-long projects. It means you focus on what will move the needle most next.

If I am building a house, I still need a vision of the finished house. But I should focus first on what needs to happen next and how to move forward quickly without compromising quality. That creates better alignment around priorities.

Long-term goals are not rigid predictions. They are a reflection of your current vision, principles, and direction. They help you make better decisions today.

They can change as circumstances change. External factors may require you to prioritise one thing over another.

Just make sure that what you choose to do next is aligned with your purpose.