Creating a Compelling Company Vision Using EOS – Part 2

Creating a compelling vision for your Company is extremely important – and it does not have to be complicated or overwhelming.

At New Economy, we have leveraged 8 questions to help us wrap our arms around our overall vision and strategy.

In our first post, (see link here) we covered the first 4 questions:

1. What are your core values?
2. What is your core focus?
3. What is your 10-year target?
4. What is your marketing strategy?

We highly recommend reading the first post before continuing on. In that post, we share the answers that we came up with at New Economy to help you get started.

We believe in creating a clear vision and communicating it to everyone.

Full disclosure, we are a Company that runs on EOS, and we happen to be data experts. 

The system has helped us to grow the Company 3x since graduating from implementation. Even if you don’t run on EOS, this post will surely help you out. 

We know firsthand as some of the thoughts and frameworks have helped us get better.

In this article, you will learn about: 

1. 4 remaining key questions to help you create a compelling vision
2. 3 key takeaways

Let’s dive in.

Refresher: 8 Key Questions to Help You Clarify Your Vision

As a refresher, below are the 8 key questions to help you clarify your vision. New Economy, we have taken the time to answer these 8 questions. 

If you need some background on what exactly vision is, check out Jim Collins’s article published in the Harvard Business Review entitled Building your Company’s Vision. You can find it here. 

Much of this is inside work that no one can do for you. The questions we will present will help you along the way.

Here they are:

1. What are your core values?
2. What is your core focus?
3. What is your 10-year target?
4. What is your marketing strategy-?
5. What is your 3-year picture?
6. What is your 1-year plan?
7. What are your top priorities over the next 90 days?
8. What are your issues?

In this post, we will run through questions 5 – 8.

We will provide a bit of background and provide the answer we came up with at New Economy.

Question #5 – What is your 3 year picture?

Having answered the previous questions, you know who you are, what you are, where you are going, and what marketing strategy you will use to get there. Now it’s time to consider what the business will look like in 3 short years from now.

At New Economy, we love the 3-year picture. It allows us to get up to 30,000 feet and dream while at the same time bringing us back down to the ground floor and having detailed budgets for the next 3 years to support that vision.

Also, the decisions that you are making today should align with the direction you are illustrated in your 3-year picture. So the decisions are powerful and must be aligned with getting you to where you want to be.

Our 3-year picture at New Economy is illustrated as follows as of December 31, 2026:

Beyond our financial measurables, we believe that it looks like the following:

• Culture of high satisfaction days
• Culture of pay for performance  
• Key partner to companies running on EOS
• Best practices and processes to support SAAS, construction, service & e-commerce companies
• Using speaking, writing, podcasts & video to advance the mission of New Economy
• Marketing generating leads 
• Wrap Around team caring for and loving our people
• Career success plans for all team members
• Customer success plan for all clients
• All core processes are operationalized through Financial Cents
• Increased efficiency through technology
• Someone else running the LT team besides Jeff

As you can see, we have created an image of what New Economy will look like in three years. 

It is important to have this documented so that you can move into the 1-year plan and start making moves to get yourself closer to your 3-year plan.

Here are some tips for coming up with your 3-year plan:

1. Schedule time with your leadership team to specifically discuss what it looks like
2. Make sure everyone believes in the plan and wants it
3. Encourage feedback and folks to speak up with concerns
4. Memorialize the plan so you can measure your progress on an ongoing basis

Question #6 – What is your 1-year plan?

Giddy up.

We are now bringing the longer-range vision to the ground level and making it real. This plan is for those who love to get stuff done.

Here we must decide what has to get done this year. 

We believe less is more and have found that we overestimate what we can do in one year and underestimate what we can do in three years.

Our 1-year picture at New Economy is illustrated as follows as of December 31, 2024:

Beyond our financial measurables, we have created Company goals for the year:

• All core processes run on Financial Cents
• Customer success plans for 10 clients
• Career success plans for all core team members
• 3 experienced new hires

Now you have 1-year goals and a budget in place to support your 1-year plan. At New Economy, we take it a step further and break it down into the next quarter we are facing.

This brings us to our next question.

Question #7 – What are your top priorities over the next 90 days?

We refer to our top quarterly priorities as rocks. These are the most important things that must be accomplished over the next 90 days. 

It’s possible that these rocks connect into an annual goal, and by investing time in the quarter, you are moving closer to the annual goals.

We have created the following measurables for Q-1 of 2024:

• Revenue is $531,000
• Gross profit is 49% or $260,000
• Net profit is 17% or $90,000

We have created our top priorities for Q-1 of 2024:

• All Team Services running on Financial Cents
• Make an offer to an experienced hire interested in supporting EOS companies 
• Set up Time Tracking & Capacity Management in Financial Cents
• All Operations & Customer Success processes running in Financial Cents
• Schedule 9 zooms with EOS implementers or integrators
• Sell $18K or MRR or $39K of total new revenue

We leverage the system of making our goals and rocks SMART. 

Meaning we want them to be:

• Specific
• Measurable
• Attainable
• Realistic 
• Time Bound

For more information on SMART goals refer to this Harvard Business Review Article to get you started.

Ok, we are covering lots of ground. We are almost there, stay with us.

This brings us to our final question.

Question #8 – What are your issues?

This is a tough one at first.

But once you get comfortable with openness, honesty, and transparency you can address pretty much anything.

An issue is an obstacle that could prevent you from reaching your targets. The sooner you accept that you have issues, the better off you will be. You will always have them and your leadership team is responsible for solving them.

Currently, at New Economy, we have 30 issues on our issues list. Our leadership spends 60 minutes per week solving these problems which increases our probability of success.

Here are some tips for coming up with your issues list:

1. Schedule time with your leadership team to specifically discuss issues
2. Consider all the obstacles, concerns, and opportunities you face
3. Take them one at a time. Focus on getting to the root cause of the issue
4. The goal is to remove the issue by solving the problem. Make sure someone is assigned responsibility for any to-do’s relating to the issue
5. Review your issues weekly

As mentioned, issues can be tough, but once you get into it, you realize that everyone has them. And the more you work at solving problems the better you become.

 

 

You now have a compelling vision with a 3-year, 1-year strategy supported by a marketing plan, and you are dealing with your issues on a regular basis.

But this is one last key piece.

You need to share this vision with your employees. The only way you can do this is to tell them. You must tell them over and over.  You want everyone’s energy going in the same direction towards the common vision, goals, and rocks you have created. 

When that happens, it will create an exponential force helping you to achieve your vision.

Here are some tips for sharing your vision:

1. Share it during new employee onboarding
2. Share it at your annual Company meeting
3. Share it at your quarterly meetings. 

They say it takes folks 7 times before something sticks. So keep repeating yourself here, it’s worth it.

Summary

We have covered all 8 questions to help you create a compelling vision for your Company. We have found that focusing on these topics has helped us to create a  foundation to grow New Economy. 

And you can too.

3 Key Takeaways

This is some heavy and impactful stuff. It will help you to build a solid foundation to build and grow your business. We are living proof.

Here are 3 key takeaways.

1. Spend some time on the 3-year plan. This should be fun and practical. It should drive the decisions you are making today and connect back to your longer-term vision. Early on, we lost sight of the 3-year plan which can create a rudderless ship. Now we have the 1-year plan lining up with our 3-year plan which helps us to ensure that we are on track.
2. Run into your issues not away from them. The more open you are to solving your problems, the faster you will be able to chase down your vision. Be open, honest, and vulnerable. Encourage others to do the same.
3. Constantly share your vision. You need to find ways to get your vision in front of your employees. They are critical to your success. They need to understand where you are taking them and the role that they will play in the vision. Connect those dots for them and you will have alignment that will move them and your business forward.

There you have it 🙂

We are living proof that this system works.

New Economy Team Members are Experts in Accounting for Entrepreneurs

If identifying ways to decrease your taxes is not in your skill set or you want to gain control of your finances to make smart decisions to build and grow your business, New Economy is an excellent partner. 

We’ll help you get your accounting and taxes done, and done right.

Schedule a time to meet with our Founder, Jeff, and discuss how we can add value to your situation.