Strategic planning that ends in decisions, a budget and a calendar

What a strategic planning engagement produces

You finish with four working documents, not a slide deck. Each one has a specific job, and together they connect a three-year intention to next Monday's priorities.

1. The plan document. Twelve to twenty pages that state the year-three destination, the strategic choices, three to five priorities with owners, a financial outline and the main risks. Our three-year strategic plan service builds it.
2. The one-page strategy. The same plan on a single page, written so a new supervisor can read it in two minutes and know what matters this year.
3. The scorecard. Roughly ten measures, each with an owner and a target, reviewed monthly. It is described on our OKRs and KPI scorecard page.
4. The review calendar. Four quarterly reviews booked for the year, with a fixed agenda and a decision log, so the plan stays current without being rewritten.

If you only need one of these, that is fine. Many clients start with a quarterly strategy review of a plan they already have.

Why plans written in January are forgotten by May

Plans fade because nobody connected them to the budget or the calendar. The pattern repeats across industries: a good offsite, a document with too many priorities, and a budget built separately by finance a month later from last year's numbers plus a percentage.

When the budget and the plan disagree, the budget wins, because it is what managers are measured against. Our answer is simple. The annual operating plan is built from the strategic plan, line by line, so each priority has money, people and a month attached to it.

A worked example you can check

Suppose a $7 million company commits to growing a commercial service line from $1.2 million to $2.4 million over three years. That is roughly 26% compound growth a year: $1.2 million becomes about $1.51 million in year one, $1.9 million in year two and $2.4 million in year three. If the average commercial contract is worth $18,000, year one needs about 17 more contracts than today. At a 30% close rate, that means roughly 58 more qualified proposals, or about five a month. Now the priority has a number a sales manager can own, and the budget can fund the estimator who writes those proposals.

Who we work with

We work with owner-led companies where the owner can no longer hold every decision personally. That usually means a leadership group of three or more people and, often, an advisory board or a formal board with outside members.

Typical situations include:

• A founder preparing a second-generation leadership team to run the company with less involvement from them.
• A board that wants a written plan to approve and a quarterly pack it can actually read.
• A company that grew quickly and now has more opportunities than people to pursue them.
• An owner thinking about value or succession in five years, who needs the next three to be planned deliberately.

We work across all 10 provinces and 3 territories. Our areas page explains how planning differs from region to region.

How an engagement runs

Every engagement follows the same rhythm, scaled to the size of the company. First, preparation: a numbers pack, one-to-one interviews with leaders and a short survey. Second, a facilitated leadership offsite where the decisions are made. Third, drafting: we write the plan and the one-page version, then build the operating budget with your finance lead. Fourth, the quarterly cadence begins.

We meet online by video call and in person. Offsites in particular are usually better in a shared room, and we are glad to travel to you. Between sessions, phone, text and email keep things moving.

Planning for uncertainty, not just for the base case

A single forecast is a guess. A plan with three versions of next year is a decision tool. Our scenario planning work prepares a base, a downside and an upside case, names the early signals for each, and agrees in advance what the company will do if a trigger is hit.

For example, if the downside case assumes revenue 15% below budget, the plan can state that hiring pauses when two consecutive months land more than 10% under target, and which three projects are deferred first. That decision is far easier to make calmly in October than in a difficult March.

What our results show

Our published results come from our HVAC work, and they show the discipline of setting targets and measuring them. GasBoilers.ca is a gas-boiler division built for CANRO Heat that now serves 26+ BC communities, a good example of a new line of business planned as its own unit. BCWide.ca reached 3× leads in 90 days. You can read what transfers to planning on our results page.

Pricing and how to start

Prices come from our group's published consulting rates: hourly consulting from $175 to $350, projects from $3,500 to $25,000, and retainers from $2,500 to $12,000 a month. Our pricing page explains which format suits which piece of planning work. There is no lock-in, and your first half-hour with us costs nothing.

To begin, send a short text to (604) 632-4959 with your company's size, your industry and the planning question on your mind. We take it from there. You can also call or email; the contact page explains what helps us prepare.