December 30, 2025. By Todd Paetznick
I have never been a big proponent of New Year’s resolutions. I have always believed that if there is something needing change in my life, I should act immediately. It’s better to act now rather than wait until the start of a new year.
New beginnings are a good time to reflect on the past. We can adjust our plans for the future to address changes that have happened. It’s also essential to consider those changes we can anticipate. After all, we can’t know for sure what the future holds. Adaptability is a strength. The decisions and plans we need to make are much easier when we know where we want to go. Sometimes, we need to modify our plans to meet long-term objectives because of forces outside our control. But the best strategy for planning and decision-making is to start with the end in mind. The end is what we want the future to look like.
The 10-Year Target is where we should start. This is far enough into the future yet near enough to the present that we can use it to build our plans. For our businesses, a 10-year target needs to be specific, including annual revenue, profitability, employee headcount, and number of locations. Using these desired metrics, we can work backwards from our goal and plan appropriately to reach those objectives. Our goals should be aggressive but also realistic. As Yogi Berra famously said, “If you don’t know where you’re going, you might not get there.”
A Three-Year Picture offers an intermediate view of what our world needs to look like to hit our longer-term target. At neither the three- nor ten-year mark will we make specific plans on how to achieve those goals. The how-to portion of our planning occurs during shorter-term goal-setting.
One-Year Plans are specific in measurement, again, and start to describe what we need to achieve and the plans we need to make to achieve our goals. For our businesses, one-year goals describe outcomes. We need to project and measure revenue, profit, personnel numbers, and a few other targets, for example. Other annual goals describe what will take the entire year to accomplish. Rolling out a new system, expanding into a new region, or acquiring another company are examples. The number of goals should not be a laundry list of everything we want to achieve during the year. Instead, think bigger picture. The number of annual goals should be small and manageable, somewhere around six or seven. Having too many goals will overwhelm us. We become paralyzed because we do not know what to do next.
90-Day Plans are the milestones that mark the good progress we are making toward our annual objectives. People think best in 90-day chunks. EOS calls these 90-day chunks “Rocks”. When hiking mountain trails in northern New Hampshire, cairns often mark the path. These markers are useful when there is no obvious route across the rocky terrain. Cairns are simply stacks of rocks. They are built by people who have been there before. These builders help others so they can find their way, too. In business, rocks are an appropriate term for waypoints toward the achievement of an annual goal. Like cairns on a hiking trail, business leaders and managers know where the company is going. They set rocks so everyone else knows the way.
Monthly Goals represent what needs to be accomplished to reach the 90-day objective, or Rock. They are indicators that we are on the path and the next Rock is in sight. Ensuring accountability for working toward monthly and weekly goals is important. It guarantees that the proper steps are taken. Progress is also being made.
Weekly To Do items are steps we need to take over the next week. These steps help us meet the monthly goals. They ensure we hit our mark. Our to-do items are connected to our monthly goals, which roll up to our quarterly rocks, and annual goals. They are all related. We can effectively prioritize what we need to do next when we know where we are going.
For New Year’s planning, start with where you want to be in ten years and work backwards. What targets do you want to hit ten years from now? Then start working backwards to identify the intermediary objectives to be achieved and the steps to be taken.
Todd Paetznick is a Business Coach who helps small- and medium-sized organizations flourish. He is an implementer of the Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS), a business optimization framework that has helped thousands of organizations achieve new success and long-term sustained growth. His company, Invert Business Coaching, helps people and their organizations reach their full potential. Todd is also in leadership with CBMC, the Christian Business Men’s Connection, where he manages the Trusted Advisor Forums (TAF) for the metro Atlanta area.
toddpaetznick.com 