Before you write next years plan

Most businesses are about to sit down and write next year's plan. Growth targets, new contracts, bigger ambitions.

Very few will pause first and ask what this year actually left them standing on. What's been quietly deferred. What's still missing from the risk register. What is it that only one or two people actually understand.

None of that shows up in a growth plan. It just sits underneath it, unexamined, waiting to be found out at a worse time than now.

The stocktake isn't a delay to next year's plan. It's what makes the plan worth writing. An hour spent this month, properly, checking what you know and what you don't, is worth more than an extra paragraph of ambition in the strategy deck.

If you're heading into year-end planning, that's the one hour I'd protect before any of the rest. If it'd help to have someone else's eyes on where you're standing, that's exactly the kind of conversation I have.