How to Create a 12-Month Growth Roadmap That Actually Works
“Plans are nothing; planning is everything.”
— Dwight D. Eisenhower
Action isn’t the only thing that produces results from sound planning, it is probably the most important factor to turning your vision of higher revenues, stronger teams, and clearer direction into something tangible and measurable, along with measurable progress on the journey of pursuing that vision.
The journey of pursuing your vision should be defined by a carefully constructed 12-month growth roadmap that will allow you to communicate this journey to your team, manage your team’s execution of this journey and allow you to measure the overall success and progress of this journey toward your vision.
Business leaders often operate under the misunderstanding that business growth is something that just happens “on its own.” This is not the case. In fact, numerous studies show that companies that have established intentional business planning systems consistently outperform their competitors in terms of revenue growth, team alignment, and strategic decision-making. Forbes+1
Here’s how to create a 12-month growth plan that doesn’t just sit on the shelf but actually works:
Clarity: What is your vision and why is it important?
You must define your vision and why it is important, as the first step in developing your growth roadmap. Identifying and defining a comprehensive annual goal, e.g., revenue growth, customer retention, etc. Once you have your goal identified, create four quarterly milestones that will represent your growth trajectory towards your goal.
The quarterly milestones are important to your roadmap because they will serve as your measurement points to inform you of whether you are on or off track with your roadmap.
The quarterly milestones should serve as your guiding star for the entire year, to ensure that you and your team stay focused on your goal as you progress through the journey of that goal.
“The secret of getting ahead is getting started.”
By knowing exactly what you want to achieve with your roadmap, you will prevent becoming scattered throughout the year.USA Biz Growth
Assess Where You Are Today (SWOT Analysis)
To know how to succeed, you must understand where you are starting.
Your Strengths and Weaknesses: What is working? What aren’t you doing?
Your Opportunities and Threats: How are the market conditions changing? What competitors are a threat?
You can’t simply do a “positive” SWOT analysis. It’s about how you view your business today, and the things that must change to reach your goals in 12 months. You can have the best vision for business growth, but if you don’t understand what will help or hinder you, you won’t grow.
Create a Tactical Plan to Keep Moving Forward
When creating your growth strategy, you need a roadmap that shows you how to navigate from your starting point (your SWOT) to your end goal (growth).
A roadmap is more than having goals laid out in a PowerPoint presentation. Your roadmap should serve as your tactical playbook. Roadmap refers to Quarterly buckets, Clear ownership, Timelines and checkpoints.
If you plan to refine your pricing and go-to-market messaging in Q1, create a list of detailed deliverables (i.e., customer research, pricing trials, competitive analysis, revised messaging, and field tests) or get hold of an expert business coach that can identify all of the deliverables and plan. Then identify owners for each deliverable, set timelines, and establish success metrics. This is how the long-term vision is broken down into tasks that you can take action on weekly.
Implement Agile Planning Approach (Measure, Adapt, Repeat)
A Road Map should not stay the same every time you review it, there are things that you should be looking for every three months and not just to keep the ‘check’ boxes on your To Do List; you should continually be asking these questions:
Are we on track, ahead of schedule or behind schedule?
Which hypotheses were proven correct or have not worked?
What aspects of the way that we execute should change?
Agile Planning focuses on reaction rather than assuming that nothing will ever change. If your quest is to grow the business in growth mindsets, you are going to want your roadmap to be flexible enough to bend with your anticipation of increased demand. WSJ Partners
Place Accountability as Part of the Rhythm of Your Business
Weekly and Monthly Reviews are about holding people accountable for what needs to be done during each of those time periods. Getting review feedback allows you to always keep your team accountable.
Use Dashboards, Scorecards or KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) (e.g. pipeline velocity, new revenue customers, and churns) to visualize your progress. Identifying both positives and negatives as trends much sooner than later will allow you to mitigate minor situations before they impact your business as predictability is created through measurement and accountability.
Bring People Along the Journey
Past, present and future of growth must include people’s input and belief in the plan for success. Conducting cross functional workshops on strategic initiatives. Training and educating teams about the roadmap, its purpose, and how it affects their contribution to business growth. Celebrating success! Building a positive company culture creates an environment conducive to business growth.
After all, business growth is not a spreadsheet exercise; it’s a human exercise.Guiding firms such as Cadence Business Development, Business Growth Catalysts, partner with C-Suite leaders to convert strategy into predictable outcomes. Whether it is defining the direction of your business or getting your team unified behind one growth narrative, successful planning and execution support make all the difference and their guidance assists in bringing your vision to fruition through a tangible action plan on your growth roadmap, crafted to serve as a reminder that a roadmap is not merely a dream, but rather, an evolving journey based on decisions made in the direction of that vision.
“Growth is not by chance, but by deliberate and conscious effort towards a goal.”
-Eric Kapral, Founder of Cadence Business Development