Strategy Season Is Coming. Don't Waste It.
Every August, business owners start thinking about next year. The timing is natural. Summer vacations are winding down, the kids are going back to school, and we all know the real new year begins with the start of football anyway.
The ownership asks: what are the goals? What needs to change? What does 2027 look like?
It's a good instinct. The problem is what usually happens next.
Someone books a conference room. The leadership team shows up with laptops and good intentions. By noon there are seventeen sticky notes on the wall and a Google Doc. A 30-page PowerPoint takes weeks to build. Another few weeks go by with reviews and edits. Somewhere around Thanksgiving, a strategy document is finished.
It becomes a doormat within a month. The business quietly drifts from well-thought-out goals back to business as usual.
The mistake isn't planning. It's treating strategy like an event.
Most small to mid-sized businesses, when I first start working with them, build their strategy once a year and never revisit it. They treat strategy like an event. The event often lacks structure, and the outcome becomes a wish list.
Strategy should be a continuous process — updated quarterly, reviewed monthly, and held accountable consistently. Strategy is not a document. It's clarity about where you're going and what to do next. It's a methodology.
And your strategy needs to fit on one page.
The One-Page Strategic Plan
For the last several years I've worked with business owners on a one-page strategic planning framework borrowed from PE playbooks.
When I tell people I use one page for a strategic plan, they're shocked. So why one page? Because it forces you to prioritize. It shifts the mindset from strategy as a concept to strategy as execution. It's a living document, not a report. And everyone on the team can actually remember what's on it.
Six components. One page. Reviewed monthly, updated quarterly:
Where are you going in the next three years? What is the business worth now? What do you want it to be worth at exit?
How do you get there? One or two sentences that explain the path from here to the Exit Vision. What is the thesis?
You only get three. Not seven or twelve. Three. If everything is a priority, nothing is. All three must ladder up to your value creation thesis and be outcome-based.
Three to five leading indicators you'll track weekly. Not lagging metrics that tell you what already happened — leading ones that tell you where you're going.
The one or two bottlenecks holding your business back. This is the most underrated piece. Growth isn't about doing more — it's about removing what's blocking growth.
Three to five specific objectives for the current quarter. Each one has an owner, a deadline, and a measurable outcome. These are what you talk about every week.
That's it. One page. Six sections. Built in one day with your team, reviewed monthly, refreshed every 90 days.
The exit vision and value creation thesis stay consistent. The rocks change quarterly as you make progress. The whole team can see where they fit. New hires know what they're walking into. And when a buyer eventually asks "how do you run this business?" — you hand them one page.
If you'd like real examples of what a strategy document looks like, or examples of any of the six components, send me an email. I'm happy to walk you through it.
As always, thanks for reading.
Brett
Fenwick Partners
fenwickpartners.co
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