Sessions with System & Soul

Free Tools: Planning Season Shouldn’t Require Therapy (Just a Roadmap)

• Benj Miller, McKenzie Decker • Season 1 • Episode 20

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Planning season shouldn’t feel like chaos. 

In this Free Tools episode, Benj Miller and McKenzie Decker walk through the one-page roadmap that helps leadership teams align vision, strategy, culture, and execution. It's the tool System & Soul uses with every client to cut through the swirl and bring clarity to the table. 

Learn how to build your strategic plan on one page, make better decisions as a team, and turn long-term vision into focused execution. 

Want the roadmap? Here you go! 

Want more Free Tools? We got you. 

Sessions is hosted by Benj Miller and McKenzie Decker

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Benj Miller:

Welcome to Session With System and Soul. I'm your host, Benj Miller here with my co-hosts and. Business partner for life. Mackenzie Decker probably just scared you putting that through life. Whoa.

McKenzie Decker:

Hold on.

Benj Miller:

There's a blood oath somewhere.

McKenzie Decker:

Not in the contract.

Benj Miller:

Yeah. Okay. Anyway today's session is one of our free tools and it's one of our favorite tools and it's one of the first tools that you're gonna experience when you work with anybody at System and Soul or do our self guided journey, and that's around getting your team aligned. On a roadmap. So McKenzie, why is this so important?

McKenzie Decker:

Yeah, so a roadmap is a one page strategic plan and its simplest form, and the idea is that we really don't o oftentimes we either overcomplicate it or under do it. When it comes to strategic planning and really aligning what we say, aligning vision, strategy, and execution. Usually we get one or two of those, not all three. And so the roadmap is really designed to create a thread through all of those things so that we have clarity not only for ourselves as business owners, but for our team so that they can understand their part in it, make better decisions and get to the goals that we set.

Benj Miller:

Yeah, A lot of times when we start having conversations with leaders, we hear things like, my team's not sure the most important things to work on. Our priorities change way too often. So we never finish what we start. There's alignment that comes with. Being missionally aligned, but then also, like you were saying, aligned on what's the most important thing to execute on right now? There's also alignment on like, how do we make decisions? What do we want this culture to be? Who do we wanna be when we grow up? And so many companies struggle because they don't take the time out to build. Map. And that's what this has really been meant to be, is like we're gonna build the map before we go on the journey. So that when we are hitting chaos, when we're confused, when we're struggling with the big issue, whether it's self-imposed, internal, external, whatever it is, we can go back to the map and say, what does the map say about what we should do next? And I know for us it's been huge. We've had moments whether it's been like a value thing of, yeah, what do our values say that we need to do in this? I know our economic engine has come into play multiple times where we're like thinking about this new thing and we're like, Hey, is that really going to affect the number one game we're trying to play? And it's no, that's just a shiny object, a cool idea. I know we could really be great at it, but it's not aligned. And so this idea of alignment comes in and a way to really do that through the whole organization.

McKenzie Decker:

Yeah. It's really intended to be a grounding tool. And I think, like you said, it can be very easy for us to breeze past some of these things. How we make decisions. Some of this stuff feels don't we do this every day? We should know this by now. But oftentimes it's unchecked for a long time. When you fall into patterns or we we develop goals, we develop habits, we develop a way of doing the work that we wanna do, but it could be engineered better. Yeah. We're also talking about this. Early fall because for a very good reason. So everyone is, or most of you I would imagine, have a walk of time on your calendar somewhere, whether it's you by yourself or it's you with your leadership team. Some teams will spend days at a time, go on a retreat, spend all of these hours dreaming up of plan for the next year or the next several years before you do that, that we wanna give you a way of really, combining, I combining the vision, strategy, and execution in a way that maybe you haven't done before, so that time that you spend is really effective. So today's session is really a, it's a bit of a working session, so we're gonna give you some we're gonna give you all of the components of the roadmap and then some questions to consider as you think about your strategic plan.

Benj Miller:

Yeah.

McKenzie Decker:

Ready to dive in.

Benj Miller:

Yeah. And one note on this, we're gonna go through this and 10 minutes.

McKenzie Decker:

Yeah.

Benj Miller:

But it's just enough to get you a taste and to know what we're talking about, what we're like at looking for in these different areas. But then we have a free tool they can download. So they can do this with their team. And reales, realistically, this is a one, one and a half, two day exercise with your team. Again, all free, we're giving you everything you need to go. Do this with your team, but we're gonna walk you through it right now. I'm gonna start. Good. Yeah,

McKenzie Decker:

let's do it.

Benj Miller:

Okay. So the first thing that goes on the sheet, again, we're getting all this on one sheet so that we can really internalize it. It's not overbearing, but the very first thing is what we call an identity statement. Who are we? And a lot of people, when they start to get in here, our gravity moves us toward this value proposition to the marketplace. What's on the hero of our website and that's really not what we're going for here. The onlyness statement is really meant to be that like flag that everybody internal knows who we are. So it's an, we call it identity'cause it's internal, it's who we are and we all have that confidence. Moving out of confidence knowing who we are. And it's a really simple formula sound. It's gonna look something like this. Alright, so we're gonna start with the oling statement. Super basic, fill in the blank type formula here. But it's, we are the only blank bath blank. The first blank is something super basic. What do you do? We're we pour concrete? We are wealth management. We professional services be more specific than professional services. What's the boring answer here? Then what is the thing that makes you unique? Something you care about, something that you do, the way that you do it. Go back to the origin story of why the organization exists. There are other companies that do what you do. So why do you need to exist? You're the only one that what and it doesn't have to make sense to anybody out there in the marketplace. It has to make sense to everybody internally in the organization. So that's where we're gonna start. Then we're gonna move to a destination statement. Destination statement also has three fills in the blank, and we're gonna get a little hardware on this one. So the first blank is, where are we going? We are going somewhere. We're going somewhere. Let's decide ahead of time where it is so that we can all be on the same page, go in the same direction. This needs to be a tangible milestone. It's not the end of the game. It's a destination. Doesn't mean the game's over and we've arrived, but it needs to be something that like we stop and throw a party because we did something big, huge, monumental. The second part of this is by lens. This sets the paces. So if we're trying to be a hundred million dollars in four years. That's very different than saying we're trying to be $10 million in four years. We have to have a different pace, a different appetite, different capital, different leadership, different risk profile. So we're gonna set the pace of our appetite here. We're going here by way because why? Hopefully everybody's heard Simon sin. Start with why that fits right here. Why? Is this journey to this destination worth going on together as a team? That's our destination's. I say it's really simple. It's pretty simple to understand. It's gonna take you some a while to sit in that, work on that and figure out what that is for you. How am I doing this with Father Kendi?

McKenzie Decker:

You're good. I just wanna recap for anyone who's listening to this and maybe trying to think through it themselves, the two questions that you're really asking yourself on that onlyness statement. And by the way, it's intimidating and people often push back on we can't really be the only don't get h too hung up on it. But the question you're really trying to answer is, what banner do we fly under? What brings our team together in a way that they can get excited about what we're trying to achieve? So what banner do we fly under? And then when we come, when it comes to destination, we're looking at kinda like a b hg. What is the inspiring visionary goal that we're headed towards? So where are we going? When will we get there? We're gonna set a realistic date and time for that. So we don't wanna just set big goals and hopefully get there. What is the phrase like shoot for the moon land among the stars. That's not how we do that with the destination. We wanna set a where, a win, and then the why, that compelling reason that we're doing this to begin with.

Benj Miller:

Yeah. Perfect. Okay, that's our first part. Second part we're gonna add in here the hedgehog concept from Jim Collins. It's a long story. He took a fable from the 18 hundreds about a little hedgehog, wakes up hungry sorry, fox that wakes up hungry every morning. It's gonna go eat the hedgehog and hedgehog. Just balls up, spikes out. Fox goes away. Frustrated, but that name gets a new plan. And he's got a great strategy to eat the hedgehog. The next day he goes out, same thing happens and the moral of the story is that the hedgehog always wins 'cause he just has to do one thing and do it really well. And Jim Collins took this into applied it to his research where he found that. Mediocre companies change their strategies a lot. They stream their tactics a lot, and great companies are focused on doing one thing, and the one thing is made up of like focus. So now we're talking about what gives your organization focus, and it's this hedgehog concept, but it's got three things. It's what are you deeply passionate about? What can you be the best in the world at, and what drives your economic engine? First two are pretty simple. What are you deeply passionate about as an organization? As you look around, as you hear conversations? What are the things, maybe it's a customer group, maybe it's a way that you're making the world better, or maybe it's your own people internally in the way that you do something there. And then what can you be the best in the world at typically, that is something to do with the craft that you're doing in your business, the way that you're doing. Again, be unique if the thing that you're best in the world out. Has to do with how you treat your people. Put it there because that's your thing. And then what draws your economic engine, it's a little more heady. But the best way to think about this is if I show up and say, I have a gift for you, and it is this can of gasoline. What do you hope is in the can? It's your limiting constraint that if you unlock this limiting constraint, you can go faster, further, and more exciting in your business. And if we know what that limiting constraint is. We can get hyperfocused as a team to cracking that open further and further. So that's the top third of the roadmaps. And this all fits nicely on one sheet of paper using some big post-its up here. But if we have our roadmap on one piece, there'd be a middle third right here, and it has three components. First components is your values. Hopefully you have three or four.'cause that's about all the human brain being internalized. But we have our values. I'm not gonna spend much time on that'cause everybody's heard, everybody talk about values, but we're gonna get off over to this third sections and we're just gonna Right culture because everybody says we wanna have a great culture or we have a great culture. And I'm like, what does that mean? And they can't answer that. So here's what we're gonna say. What is a culture? What is our culture? What does it feel like to work here? What would be the best review we could get? On Glassdoor about somebody talking about working here. Let's define what that looks like, what it feels like. Get three or four adjectives here, and then we can come back and solve for the middle. And the middle is organizational habits or org habits. So we've got our values. This is what individuals are expected to do when they show up. Here's what we're committing to do as an organization. Then as a result of that should equal this culture. When we have this, we start to get a picture of what it looks like to build this. We keep committing to prioritizing budgeting our habits. We, when we're doing things, we can go, Hey, is that going to make our culture feel more like this? Or less like this? So it's also a decision making, prioritizing focusing exercise, just like we talked in the, about in the middle, when the chaos hits, how do we go back to the roadmap to understand what we needed to do to be on the journey ahead?

McKenzie Decker:

One of the things I love about this existing on a strategic plan is I think it's so unusual. But it's exactly, it's who will be in the course of doing the work that we say we're going to do. And I think if you look at any company over the course of their tenure goal, there's a number of people related issues that are going to come up. There's the way that people make decisions. There's the way that people show up to do their work and lead their teams, and it all impacts this big destination that we have, the, these big, this big vision that we have. So I love that who we are is just as much a part of the strategy as. We're going, what we're gonna do and how it's gonna do it.

Benj Miller:

Well said. Can I give you the marker to do the final third?

McKenzie Decker:

You do it. I'm gonna give some color commentary, I think. Okay. Yeah.

Benj Miller:

Alright, I've messed up the layout 'cause I did not lay out on a sheet of paper like this. But we're gonna go with three more columns like we did over here and we call these bets and when we think about what a bet is. It's a calculated risk. There's a risk. There's in return, there is an opportunity cost. And every leader, founder, CEO, understands this very innately because starting the business was a risk. Hiring the first employee was a risk. Maybe taking capital or debt was a risk. There's these tiny risks we make every single day. And then there are some big decisions we make along the way with big risks. And what we need to do here is not only. Teach our organization how to think in bets and make bets, but we need to organize the business strategically to say, what are the bets that we're going to make collectively? And when we do that, we're gonna do it on a 3G Horizons one year, Verizon in a quarter. And what that allows us to do is give us a trajectory that we're aiming for. Three years is far enough. I can see it, feel it, but it's still out there a little wise. This one year then becomes a list of our priorities for the year. This is not hypothetical this. These are the goals, the priorities for the year, and then our quarter. It's the old adage, how do you need an elephant? Elephant One bite at a time? So here's how we're going to take a chunk out of our priorities for the year. Color commentary.

McKenzie Decker:

Yeah. When this is my, maybe my favorite section as an operator. This really takes this big vision and these big picture strategies and brings it to the ground and really helps us find some ways that we can that we can really see that we're getting done and gives us some clarity on where we're gonna spend our time, resources, and energy. This is also an excellent. Tool for, when you get six months down the road after setting that strategic plan, it really becomes a thing that you look back on and say, as new opportunities come up, as new partnerships or new business lines appear on the radar, we go, is that part of what we've pre-decided? So it becomes a bit of a pre-decision tool that helps us make the right decisions later. A couple of things on this. When we talk about the three-year, for some people that's almost too far out to really feel like we know what's going to happen in our industry or in the market to really make really concrete decisions on what we're going to do to get there. We call that a three-year direction. So when. When you think about your three year, it could be helpful to think, what would we need to do in order to get to where we wanna go? And in kind of broader and broader buckets. So it's the direction of where we're headed. When we get to the one year, it becomes much more tactical. What do we need to see happen? What are the key activities that are gonna take up our time? And then that quarter, the quarter is our rhythm, is my favorite thing about how we run system in soul and help. Help other businesses, but it becomes a way of organizing our time, focus, and energy. What really deserves our attention. That's gonna help us not work in the business, but work on the business to help it grow and continue to move towards progress and maturity over time.

Benj Miller:

Great recap from the execution between, so this is the one page roadmap and what this does and align the organization. We can go back to this. And it's not that once we set this, it's like in stone,

McKenzie Decker:

right?

Benj Miller:

But there becomes a conversation. It's, Mackenzie said, grounded. We're grounded in this. And this is the roadmap until we change it sometimes like COVID was a great example. Companies we were working with, they all had beautiful roadmaps. We had to go back and say, okay, everything's gotta change in this next season. We had no idea what one year looked like. We didn't know if we'd be alive in three years. And so it became like a survival of the quarter. And even here, we had to sometimes break those down into what does the next month look like? What does the next 45 days look like? Because, but we had the roadmap to go back to. To pivot from. We got grounded in that and then we were able to adjust because we had already done this work. So if you're going into annual planning season, or if you've never done this is the single best win that I've seen, that you can actually do tangible work to get your team on the same page and aligned and ready to go back and execute around these ideas of where we're trying to go and who we wanna be.

McKenzie Decker:

If this sparked something for you and you think it would be helpful as you enter planning season, we're gonna drop a link in the show notes, and maybe in the chat with the comments. I don't know, wherever, all the places, we'll drop a link. You can download an actual one page roadmap that you can fill out yourself. There will be, you can use this video. There's also some resources that will prompt you and help you fill it in on your own. And then if you want more help in that, we've got. Business coaches all over the country that run workshops and facilitate teams through this exercise. So you can get in touch with us, we'll share that with you as well. I hope this has been helpful to you. It's helpful to me every single day of system and soul in the business that we run. So check it out, use it, and, good luck.

Benj Miller:

Hey, also though, if you know somebody that's frustrated in their business, a lot of times it's because they don't have the barrier here. So please do them a favor and share this with them. And we wanna thank fist bumps for making this show happen, putting it together. Keep our heads on straight. Thank you fist bumps. See you next week for another episode of Sessions.

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Benj Miller

Host
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McKenzie Decker

Host