company future plan

5. Plan your course of action.

Next, outline how you’ll achieve your growth goals with a detailed growth strategy. Again, we suggest writing out a detailed growth strategy plan to gain the understanding and buy-in of your team.

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7 Business Plan Examples to Inspire Your Own (2024)

Need support creating your business plan? Check out these business plan examples for inspiration.

Any aspiring entrepreneur researching how to start a business will likely be advised to write a business plan. But few resources provide business plan examples to really guide you through writing one of your own.

Here are some real-world and illustrative business plan examples to help you craft your business plan .

7 business plan examples: section by section

The business plan examples in this article follow this template:

• Executive summary.  An introductory overview of your business.
• Company description.  A more in-depth and detailed description of your business and why it exists.
• Market analysis.  Research-based information about the industry and your target market.
• Products and services.  What you plan to offer in exchange for money.
• Marketing plan.   The promotional strategy to introduce your business to the world and drive sales.
• Logistics and operations plan.  Everything that happens in the background to make your business function properly.
• Financial plan.  A breakdown of your numbers to show what you need to get started as well as to prove viability of profitability.
• Executive summary

Your  executive summary  is a page that gives a high-level overview of the rest of your business plan. It’s easiest to save this section for last.

In this  free business plan template , the executive summary is four paragraphs and takes a little over half a page:

• Company description

You might repurpose your company description elsewhere, like on your About page, social media profile pages, or other properties that require a boilerplate description of your small business.

Soap brand ORRIS  has a blurb on its About page that could easily be repurposed for the company description section of its business plan.

You can also go more in-depth with your company overview and include the following sections, like in the example for Paw Print Post:

• Business structure.  This section outlines how you  registered your business —as an  LLC , sole proprietorship, corporation, or other  business type . “Paw Print Post will operate as a sole proprietorship run by the owner, Jane Matthews.”
• Nature of the business.  “Paw Print Post sells unique, one-of-a-kind digitally printed cards that are customized with a pet’s unique paw prints.”
• Industry.  “Paw Print Post operates primarily in the pet industry and sells goods that could also be categorized as part of the greeting card industry.”
• Background information.  “Jane Matthews, the founder of Paw Print Post, has a long history in the pet industry and working with animals, and was recently trained as a graphic designer. She’s combining those two loves to capture a niche in the market: unique greeting cards customized with a pet’s paw prints, without needing to resort to the traditional (and messy) options of casting your pet’s prints in plaster or using pet-safe ink to have them stamp their ‘signature.’”
• Business objectives.  “Jane will have Paw Print Post ready to launch at the Big Important Pet Expo in Toronto to get the word out among industry players and consumers alike. After two years in business, Jane aims to drive $150,000 in annual revenue from the sale of Paw Print Post’s signature greeting cards and have expanded into two new product categories.”
• Team.  “Jane Matthews is the sole full-time employee of Paw Print Post but hires contractors as needed to support her workflow and fill gaps in her skill set. Notably, Paw Print Post has a standing contract for five hours a week of virtual assistant support with Virtual Assistants Pro.”

Your  mission statement  may also make an appearance here.  Passionfruit  shares its mission statement on its company website, and it would also work well in its example business plan.

• Market analysis

The market analysis consists of research about supply and demand, your target demographics, industry trends, and the competitive landscape. You might run a SWOT analysis and include that in your business plan. 

Here’s an example  SWOT analysis  for an online tailored-shirt business:

You’ll also want to do a  competitive analysis  as part of the market research component of your business plan. This will tell you who you’re up against and give you ideas on how to differentiate your brand. A broad competitive analysis might include:

• Target customers
• Unique value add  or what sets their products apart
• Sales pitch
• Price points  for products
• Shipping  policy
• Products and services

This section of your business plan describes your offerings—which products and services do you sell to your customers? Here’s an example for Paw Print Post:

• Marketing plan

It’s always a good idea to develop a marketing plan  before you launch your business. Your marketing plan shows how you’ll get the word out about your business, and it’s an essential component of your business plan as well.

The Paw Print Post focuses on four Ps: price, product, promotion, and place. However, you can take a different approach with your marketing plan. Maybe you can pull from your existing  marketing strategy , or maybe you break it down by the different marketing channels. Whatever approach you take, your marketing plan should describe how you intend to promote your business and offerings to potential customers.

• Logistics and operations plan

The Paw Print Post example considered suppliers, production, facilities, equipment, shipping and fulfillment, and inventory.

Financial plan

The financial plan provides a breakdown of sales, revenue, profit, expenses, and other relevant financial metrics related to funding and profiting from your business.

Ecommerce brand  Nature’s Candy’s financial plan  breaks down predicted revenue, expenses, and net profit in graphs.

It then dives deeper into the financials to include:

• Funding needs
• Projected profit-and-loss statement
• Projected balance sheet
• Projected cash-flow statement

You can use this financial plan spreadsheet to build your own financial statements, including income statement, balance sheet, and cash-flow statement.

Types of business plans, and what to include for each

A one-page business plan is meant to be high level and easy to understand at a glance. You’ll want to include all of the sections, but make sure they’re truncated and summarized:

• Executive summary: truncated
• Market analysis: summarized
• Products and services: summarized
• Marketing plan: summarized
• Logistics and operations plan: summarized
• Financials: summarized

A startup business plan is for a new business. Typically, these plans are developed and shared to secure  outside funding . As such, there’s a bigger focus on the financials, as well as on other sections that determine viability of your business idea—market research, for example.

• Market analysis: in-depth
• Financials: in-depth

Your internal business plan is meant to keep your team on the same page and aligned toward the same goal.

A strategic, or growth, business plan is a bigger picture, more-long-term look at your business. As such, the forecasts tend to look further into the future, and growth and revenue goals may be higher. Essentially, you want to use all the sections you would in a normal business plan and build upon each.

• Market analysis: comprehensive outlook
• Products and services: for launch and expansion
• Marketing plan: comprehensive outlook
• Logistics and operations plan: comprehensive outlook
• Financials: comprehensive outlook

Feasibility

Your feasibility business plan is sort of a pre-business plan—many refer to it as simply a feasibility study. This plan essentially lays the groundwork and validates that it’s worth the effort to make a full business plan for your idea. As such, it’s mostly centered around research.

Set yourself up for success as a business owner

Building a good business plan serves as a roadmap you can use for your ecommerce business at launch and as you reach each of your business goals. Business plans create accountability for entrepreneurs and synergy among teams, regardless of your  business model .

Kickstart your ecommerce business and set yourself up for success with an intentional business planning process—and with the sample business plans above to guide your own path.

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Business plan examples FAQ

How do i write a simple business plan, what is the best format to write a business plan, what are the 4 key elements of a business plan.

• Executive summary: A concise overview of the company's mission, goals, target audience, and financial objectives.
• Business description: A description of the company's purpose, operations, products and services, target markets, and competitive landscape.
• Market analysis: An analysis of the industry, market trends, potential customers, and competitors.
• Financial plan: A detailed description of the company's financial forecasts and strategies.

What are the 3 main points of a business plan?

• Concept: Your concept should explain the purpose of your business and provide an overall summary of what you intend to accomplish.
• Contents: Your content should include details about the products and services you provide, your target market, and your competition.
• Cashflow: Your cash flow section should include information about your expected cash inflows and outflows, such as capital investments, operating costs, and revenue projections.

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Prepare a business plan for growth

Planning is key to any business throughout its existence. Every successful business regularly reviews its business plan to ensure it continues to meet its needs. It's sensible to review current performance on a regular basis and identify the most likely strategies for growth.

Once you've reviewed your progress and identified the key growth areas that you want to target, it's time to revisit your business plan and make it a road map to the next stages for your business.

This guide will show how you can turn your business plan from a static document into a dynamic template that will help your business both survive and thrive.

The importance of ongoing business planning

What your business plan should include, drawing up a more sophisticated business plan, plan and allocate resources effectively, use targets to implement your business plan, when and how to review your business plan.

Most potential investors will want to see a business plan before they consider funding your business. Although many businesses are tempted to use their business plans solely for this purpose, a good plan should set the course of a business over its lifespan.

A business plan plays a key role in allocating resources throughout a business. It is a tool that can help you attract new funds or that you can use as a strategy document. A good business plan reveals how you would use the bank loan or investment you are asking for.

Ongoing business planning means that you can monitor whether you are achieving your business objectives . A business plan can be used as a tool to identify where you are now and in which direction you wish your business to grow. A business plan will also ensure that you meet certain key targets and manage business priorities.

You can maximise your chances of success by adopting a continuous and regular business planning cycle that keeps the plan up-to-date. This should include regular business planning meetings which involve key people from the business.

To find out more, see our guides on how to review your business performance and how to assess your options for growth .

If you regularly assess your performance against the plans and targets you have set, you are more likely to meet your objectives. It can also signpost where and why you're going astray. Many businesses choose to assess progress every three or six months.

The assessment will also help you in discussions with banks, investors and even potential buyers of your business. Regular review is a good vehicle for showing direction and commitment to employees, customers and suppliers.

Defining your business' purpose in your business plan keeps you focused, inspires your employees and attracts customers.

Your business plan should include a summary of what your business does, how it has developed and where you want it to go. In particular, it should cover your strategy for improving your existing sales and processes to achieve the growth you desire.

You also need to make it clear what timeframe the business plan covers - this will typically be for the next 12 to 24 months.

The plan needs to include:

• The marketing aims and objectives , for example how many new customers you want to gain and the anticipated size of your customer base at the end of the period. To find out about marketing strategy, see our guide on how to create your marketing strategy .
• Operational information such as where your business is based, who your suppliers are and the premises and equipment needed.
• Financial information , including profit and loss forecasts, cash flow forecasts, sales forecasts and audited accounts.
• A summary of the business objectives, including targets and dates.
• If yours is an owner-managed business, you may wish to include an exit plan . This includes planning the timing of your departure and the circumstances, e.g. family succession, sale of the business, floating your business or closing it down.

If you intend to present your business plan to an external audience such as investors or banks, you will also need to include:

• your aims and objectives for each area of the business
• details of the history of the business, including financial records from the last three years - if this isn't possible, provide details about trading to date
• the skills and qualifications of the management involved in your business
• information about the product or service, its distinctiveness and where it fits into the marketplace

If your business has grown to encompass a series of departments or divisions, each with its own targets and objectives, you may need to draw up a more sophisticated business plan.

The individual business plans of the departments and separate business units will need to be integrated into a single strategy document for the entire organisation.

This can be a complex exercise but it's vital if each business unit is to tread a consistent path and not conflict with the overall strategy.

This is not just an issue for large enterprises - many small firms consist of separate business units pursuing different strategies.

To draw up a business plan that marries all the separate units of an organisation requires a degree of co-ordination. It may seem obvious, but make sure all departments are using the same planning template.

Objectives for individual departments

It's important for each department to feel that they are a stakeholder in the plan. Typically, each department head will draft the unit's business plan and then agree on its final form in conjunction with other departments.

Each unit's budgets and priorities must be set so that they fit in with those of the entire organisation. Generally, individual unit plans are required to be more specific and precisely defined than the overall business plan. It's important that the objectives set for business units are realistic and deliverable. However complex it turns out to be, the individual business unit plan needs to be easily understood by the people whose job it is to make it work. They also need to be clear on how their plan fits in with that of the wider organisation.

The business plan plays a key role in allocating resources throughout a business so that the objectives set in the plan can be met.

Once you've reviewed your progress to date and identified your strategy for growth, your existing business plan may look dated and may no longer reflect your business' position and future direction.

When you are reviewing your business plan to cover the next stages, it's important to be clear on how you will allocate your resources to make your strategy work.

For example, if a particular business unit or department has been given a target, the business plan should allocate sufficient resources to achieve it. These resources may already be available within the business or may be generated by future activity.

In practice this could mean recruiting more office staff, spending more on marketing or buying more supplies or equipment. You may want to provide funds through current cash flow, generating more profit or seeking external funding. In general, it is always better to fund future growth through revenue generation.

However, you should do some precise budgeting to decide on the right level of resourcing for a particular unit or department. It's important that resources are prioritised, so that areas of a business which are key to delivering the overall aims and objectives are adequately funded. If funding isn't available this may involve making cutbacks in other areas.

A successful business plan should incorporate a set of targets and objectives.

While the overall plan may set strategic goals, these are unlikely to be achieved unless you use SMART objectives or targets, i.e. S pecific, M easurable, A chievable, R ealistic and T imely.

Targets help everyone within a business understand what they need to achieve and when they need to achieve it.

You can monitor the performance of employees, teams or a new product or service by using appropriate performance indicators . These can be:

• sales or profit figures over a given period
• milestones in new product development
• productivity benchmarks for individual team members
• market-share statistics

Targets make it clearer for individual employees to see where they fit within an organisation and what they need to do to help the business meet its objectives. Setting clear objectives and targets and closely monitoring their delivery can make the development of your business more effective. Targets and objectives should also form a key part of employee appraisals, as a means of objectively addressing individuals' progress.

Once you've drawn up your new business plan and put it into practice, it needs to be continually monitored to make sure the objectives are being achieved. This review process should follow an assessment of your progress to date and an analysis of the most promising ways to develop your business. To find out more about these stages see our guides on how to review your business performance and how to assess your options for growth .

This process is called the business plan cycle . In some businesses, the cycle may be a continuous process with the plan being regularly updated and monitored. For most businesses, an annual plan - broken down into four quarterly operating plans - is sufficient. However, if a business is heavily sales driven, it can make more sense to have a monthly operating plan, supplemented where necessary with weekly targets and reviews.

It's important to keep in mind that major events in your business' target marketplace (e.g. competitor consolidation, acquisition of a major customer) or in the broader environment (e.g. new legislation) should trigger a review of your strategic objectives.

Regardless of whether or not there are fixed time intervals in your business plan, it must be part of a rolling process, with regular assessment of performance against the plan and agreement of a revised forecast if necessary.

Original document, Prepare a business plan for growth , © Crown copyright 2009 Source: Business Link UK (now GOV.UK/Business ) Adapted for Québec by Info entrepreneurs

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Organizing for the future: Nine keys to becoming a future-ready company

The prospect of successful vaccines for COVID-19 has given business leaders everywhere hope that the pandemic may be finally nearing a turning point. And not a second too soon: the organizational adrenaline that helped many companies get things done quickly and well during the pandemic’s early days has, in many cases, been replaced by fatigue.

Yet even as leaders take action to reenergize their people and organizations , the most forward looking see a larger opportunity—the chance to build on pandemic-related accomplishments and reexamine (or even reimagine) the organization’s identity, how it works, and how it grows.

The pressure to change had been building for years. Well before the COVID-19 pandemic, senior executives routinely worried their organizations were too slow, too siloed, too bogged down in complicated matrix structures, too bureaucratic. What many leaders feared, and the pandemic confirms, is that their companies were organized for a world that is disappearing—an era of standardization and predictability that’s being overwritten by four big trends: a combination of heightened connectivity, lower transaction costs, unprecedented automation, and shifting demographics (Exhibit 1). (For more about these forces, see “ Organizing for the future: Why now? ”) And if incumbents didn’t see the future in themselves they saw it clearly in the competition: digital upstarts that continue to innovate, and win, in bold new ways.

In this article, we’ll synthesize lessons from our experience and from new research on the organizational practices of 30 top companies to highlight how businesses can best organize for the future. While no organization has yet cracked the code, the experimentation underway suggests that future-ready companies share three characteristics: they know who they are and what they stand for; they operate with a fixation on speed and simplicity; and they grow by scaling up their ability to learn, innovate, and seek good ideas regardless of their origin. By embracing these fundamentals—through the nine organizational imperatives that underpin them—companies will improve their odds of thriving in the next normal.

The bad news? Companies have zero time to lose. In an increasingly winner-takes-all business environment in which McKinsey research  finds that up to 95 percent of economic profit is earned by the top 20 percent of companies, any organization that isn’t seeking new approaches is on borrowed time.

The good news? Not only do these same top performers offer hints at what a better organization could look like, but companies everywhere are recognizing that the pandemic offers a once-in-a-generation opportunity for change. Indeed, the much-anticipated—and yes, inevitable—transition from today’s COVID-19 crisis mode to the next normal offers senior executives a unique unfreezing opportunity. By seizing the initiative, companies can discover organizational “unlocks” and create new systems that are antifragile, 1 Author Nassim Taleb’s concept of antifragility is instructive. “The resilient,” Taleb writes, “resists shocks and stays the same; the antifragile gets better.” For more, see Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder , New York, NY: Random House Trade Paperbacks, 2012. more flexible, more organic, more interconnected, more purposeful—and simply more human. 2 These ideas have a long history. For example, consider the notion of open, dynamic organizational systems versus closed, static, mechanistic systems articulated by Daniel Katz and Robert L. Kahn in “Evaluating the application of theories of open systems thinking,” 1978.

Reinvention needed

Ask executives about their company and you can expect to be shown an organization chart. No wonder. The management concepts that the org chart visualizes—coordination, hierarchy, a matrixed organization—are the ones leaders grew up with and know best, as did generations before them. The original org chart  hails from 1854, and was introduced to help run the New York and Erie Railroad during the age of the steam locomotive.

Therein lies the challenge. Today’s organizations are set up as traditional hierarchies or matrix organizations with roots stretching back to the industrial revolutions of the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries. In theory, these structures provide clear lines of authority from frontline employees up through layers of management. In reality, matrix structures have only grown more complex as business has—to the extent that in some companies they are so cumbersome they hardly function.

The takeaway? We shouldn’t expect these old models to be fit for purpose in today’s environment. They are mechanistic by design, built to solve for uniformity, bureaucracy, and control—goals that undercut what companies now prioritize: creativity, speed, and accountability.

The answer isn’t to modify the old models but to replace them with something radically better.

Organizing for the (winner-takes-all) future

To define “radically better” for organizations, we—along with our colleagues in McKinsey’s Organization Practice—embarked on a research effort in 2018 to understand how companies could successfully organize for the future. This work identified nine imperatives, highlighted in Exhibit 2, that we believe separate future-ready organizations from the pack.

Exhibit 3 shows the degree to which 30 top US companies are already making or considering bold moves across the imperatives. These companies—all among the top three in their industry as measured by total economic profit captured between 2015 and 2019—represent the vanguard of an increasingly winner-takes-all world (see sidebar, “The winner takes it all”).

Top-performing companies are taking bold action across all nine imperatives.

1 To acknowledge that industries have different market fundamentals and face different headwinds and tailwinds, we selected the top 10 industries as measured by their average economic profit between 2015–19. We then selected the top 3 companies from each industry by the same metric.

2 Bold moves defined as: 1) Company among the first to adopt a given practice; 2) the practice is unique and not copied elsewhere; or 3) the practice has been scaled across >50% of the company.

3 Bold plans defined as: Company is actively planning or piloting a bold move as defined above.

Source: McKinsey Organization Practice; McKinsey Strategy & Corporate Finance Practice

McKinsey & Company

The winner takes it all

To learn the extent to which the nine imperatives were being studied and pursued by leading organizations, we turned to groundbreaking research conducted by our colleagues in McKinsey’s Strategy & Corporate Finance Practice for their book, Strategy Beyond the Hockey Stick . There, the authors observed that company performance (as measured by average economic profit) demonstrates a power law—the tails of the curve rise and fall at exponential rates with long “flatlands” in between. The implications of the power law are stark: companies in the top quintile capture no less than 90 percent of economic profit, and the gap appears to be widening .

As part of our own research, we looked to this top quintile, selecting the top three companies from each of the ten highest-scoring industries on average economic profit from 2015 to 2019. We then conducted expert interviews and outside-in analysis to determine the degree to which the companies were acting on—or exploring—the nine organizational imperatives that form the heart of this article.

Three of the imperatives proved notable pockets of bold action: taking a stance on purpose (83 percent of companies we studied), establishing ecosystems (83 percent), and creating data-rich tech platforms (73 percent).

Further, when we looked across the three categories (“who we are,” “how we operate,” “how we grow”) that together comprise the nine imperatives, we noted that top-performing companies didn’t concentrate their efforts on any single category but instead tended to act across all three. This could suggest that all three areas are viewed as important to future organizational performance.

Indeed, in an increasingly winner-takes-all economy in which even above-average performance won’t guarantee returns above the cost of capital, we would expect the bar on organizational innovation to only rise.

As our colleagues in McKinsey’s Strategy & Corporate Finance Practice demonstrated in their 2018 book, Strategy Beyond the Hockey Stick , companies in the top quintile for economic profit capture almost 90 percent of it. A more recent analysis  shows this share has increased to 95 percent—basically all excess returns over the cost of capital.

Clearly, the case for reimagining an organization and taking bold actions has never been clearer. To see how companies can do both, let’s turn to the organizational imperatives and examine the ways in which they help organizations answer three core questions: Who are we? How do we operate? How do we grow?

Who we are: Strengthen identity

In his seminal 1937 essay, “The nature of the firm,” 3 Coase’s essay, described by him as “little more than an undergraduate essay,” is nonetheless widely cited as contributing to his 1991 Nobel Prize for economics. For more about Coase’s life and career at the University of Chicago (where he taught until his death in 2013 at the age of 102), see Sarah Galer, “Ronald Coase still stirs debate at 101,” University of Chicago, April 23, 2012, uchicago.edu. the economist and eventual Nobel laureate Ronald Coase argued that corporations exist to avoid the transaction costs of the free market. Yet with transaction costs plummeting (spurred by rising connectivity) this rationale no longer holds up. Why, then, do companies exist?

The answer is identity. People long to belong, and they want to be part of something bigger than themselves. Companies that fixate only on profits will lose ground to organizations that create a strong identity that meets employees’ needs for affiliation, social cohesion, purpose, and meaning.

Future-ready organizations accomplish this in three ways: they get clear on their purpose; they know how they create value and why they’re unique; and they create strong and distinct cultures that help attract and retain the best people.

Imperative 1: Take a stance on purpose

Top-performing organizations know that purpose is both a differentiating factor and a must-have. A strongly held sense of corporate purpose is a company’s unique affirmation of its identity—the why of work 4 For more, see Simon Sinek, Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action , New York, NY: Penguin Group, 2009. —and embodies everything the organization stands for from a historical, emotional, social, and practical point of view.

Future-ready companies recognize that purpose helps attract people to join an organization, remain there, and thrive. Investors understand why this is valuable, and factor purpose into their decision making: the rise of environmental, social, and governance (ESG)–related funds is just one of the ways they acknowledge that purpose links to value creation  in tangible ways.

Nonetheless, few companies harness purpose fully. In a McKinsey survey of employees at US companies, 82 percent said organizational purpose is important , but only half that number said their purpose drove impact. How to bridge the gap? Take action to set the company’s purpose in motion ; help make it real for people. This only happens when employees identify with and feel connected to their company’s purpose. While such connections can be encouraged and reinforced through meaningful, symbolic action—for example, Amazon leaves an empty chair at meetings to represent the customer’s role in decisions 5 For more, see George Anders, “Inside Amazon’s idea machine: How Bezos decodes customers,” Forbes , April 4, 2012, forbes.com. —purpose must also be forged in tangible choices and behaviors. Consider CVS Health’s choice to stop selling tobacco products to more fully achieve a purpose of “help[ing] people on their path to better health.” 6 For more, see Eileen Howard Boone, “An insider look at CVS’s decision to quit the cigarette business,” Guardian , June 18, 2014, theguardian.com.

It’s often said that “where your talents and the needs of the world cross, there lies your vocation.” Indeed, employees aspire further (and even live longer) when their energies are channeled to purpose. McKinsey research finds that people who say they are “living their purpose” at work are four times more likely  to report higher engagement levels than those who say they aren’t.

When centered at the heart of work, purpose helps people navigate uncertainty, inspires commitment, and even reveals untapped market potential. Future-ready organizations will clearly articulate what they stand for, why they exist, and will use purpose as the glue to connect employees and other stakeholders in ways that inform their business choices.

In a McKinsey survey of employees at US companies, 82 percent said organizational purpose is important, but only half that number said their purpose drove impact.

Imperative 2: Sharpen your value agenda

While all companies have a strategy for how they create value, 7 For more, see C.K. Prahalad and Gary Hamel, “The core competence of the corporation,” Harvard Business Review , May–June 1990, hbr.org. few can show precisely how the organization will achieve it. Future-ready companies, by contrast, avoid this dilemma by creating a value agenda—a map that disaggregates a company’s ambitions and targets into tangible organizational elements such as business units, regions, product lines, and even key capabilities. Armed with such a depiction, these companies can articulate where value is created in the organization, what sets the company apart from the pack, and even what might propel its success in the future.

The key is to use the value agenda to focus the organization’s efforts and instill a sense of what really matters in every employee. When organizations can leverage this clarity—knowing exactly what differentiates them from everyone else—the results are powerful and hard to replicate. Consider how Apple rallies itself behind creating the best user experience. The company’s obsessiveness when it comes to pleasing customers includes obvious things like product design but extends to how products are packaged: the company has a small team dedicated just to packaging to ensure that the experience of opening the box elicits just the right emotional response. 8 For more, see Jamie Condliffe, “Apple’s packaging is so good because it employs a dedicated box opener,” Gizmodo, January 25, 2012, gizmodo.com.  

The power of a clear value agenda isn’t only that it helps a company better achieve its strategic priorities today but also that it gives the organization a line of sight into how to shift resources as priorities change. Top-performing companies, after all, reallocate their people aggressively, dynamically, and continuously against their core priorities, recognizing that this activity is both an economic engine and long-term competitive strength. According to McKinsey research, companies that frequently reallocate talent to high-value initiatives  are more than twice as likely to outperform peers on total returns to shareholders.

While all companies have a strategy for how they create value, few can show precisely how the organization will achieve it.

Imperative 3: Use culture as your ‘secret sauce’

In addition to having a clear why (purpose) and what (a value agenda), companies that thrive in the next normal will distinguish themselves by their cultures—the how of any organization. Culture is that unique set of behaviors, rituals, symbols, and experiences that collectively describes “how we run things.” Among the most successful companies, culture forms the backbone of organizational health and fuels sustained outperformance over time: companies with strong cultures achieve up to three-times higher total returns to shareholders  than companies without them.

Telltale signs of a strong culture of performance include leaders who consistently carry out the behaviors the company aspires to, work practices that stand out and feel fresh to outsiders, and innovative approaches to important moments—everything from employee onboarding to how meetings are run. Amazon, for example, famously enforces its “two-pizza rule” mandating that no team should be larger than two pizzas can feed. The rule supports the company’s idiosyncratic approach to meetings: keep them small, no PowerPoint, and start with silence to give participants time to reread the required premeeting memo (time that CEO Jeff Bezos refers to as “study hall” ). These approaches might seem like quirks, but, in fact, they directly support a valuable business goal: helping the company reach faster, better decisions.

Leaders hoping to create a robust performance culture need to start by cooking up their organization’s own unique “secret sauce.” The main ingredient: specific, observable behaviors that employees at all levels of the company adhere to.

Broad themes won’t cut it. Instead, behaviors must be made an integral part of core business activities and specific work tasks, especially for the moments that matter. A global manufacturer, for example, wanted shop-floor workers to view operational discipline as everyone’s job. To promote this, the company encouraged frontline teams to briefly huddle at the start of every shift to review the company’s “golden rules of safety.” Ultimately, the manufacturer created tailored interventions for different groups  of employees based on their respective roles, goals, and even particular mindsets that might otherwise have held employees back.

Culture can’t just exist in slogans painted on the walls or in catchy email signature lines. Defined principles and ways of working are critical to creating a cohesive, long-lasting organization. And culture plagiarists be warned—culture is devilishly hard to copy and should ultimately be unique to each organization. When leaders choose—and build—the kind of culture they want the organization to embody, they create a virtuous cycle, attracting the right talent that will thrive in their culture, unlock their value agenda, and “turbocharge” performance.

How to strengthen your company’s identity

Learn more about how companies can strengthen their identity (“Who we are”)

Igniting individual purpose in times of crisis

Creating strong links to an individual purpose benefits individuals and companies alike—and could be vital in managing the postpandemic uncertainties that lie ahead.

Linking talent to value

Getting the best people into the most important roles does not happen by chance; it requires a disciplined look at where the organization really creates value and how top talent contributes.

Establish a performance culture as your “secret sauce”

Companies with strong cultures achieve up to three-times higher total returns to shareholders than companies without them.

How we operate: Prioritize speed

Visit a future-ready organization and you’ll observe that speed is both a preoccupation and a cultural bias. You’ll even hear it in the company lexicon, in expressions such as “increasing the clock speed,” “metabolic rate,” or “a bias for action.” While the COVID-19 crisis has made speed a priority for many organizations , it has also reinforced how difficult speed is to harness. Once organizations galvanize identity, they need to optimize for speed. Operating models need to be fast, nimble, and frictionless to create ways of working that foster agility and simplicity. They need to enable a network of empowered, dynamic teams to find pockets of value, including at the company’s “edges” where employees are closest to customers.

Imperative 4: Radically flatten structure

As the business environment has become more complex and interconnected in recent years, many companies have mirrored these changes in their organizational structures, creating an ever-more convoluted matrix. Unwittingly, they are betting on organizational complexity to solve market complexity.

This is a losing bet. Future-ready organizations, by contrast, structure themselves in ways that make them fitter, flatter, faster, and far better at unlocking considerable value. Their goal isn’t to eradicate hierarchy so much as make it less important as an organizing mechanism. They flatten the organization and adopt the simplest P&L structure possible, reinforcing business objectives with clear, strong performance management and other mechanisms.

Consider Haier, the China-based multinational maker of appliances and consumer electronics that shifted away from traditional hierarchical structure and toward emergent, agile teams. Employing one of the more intriguing approaches we’ve come across, Haier is an organization with no layers, no traditional bosses, and no middle management; yet the company is anything but a free-for-all.

Future-ready organizations structure themselves in ways that make them fitter, flatter, faster, and far better at unlocking value.

Instead, thousands of independent “microenterprises”—small, flexible teams that form by mutual selection—collaborate over networks of platforms and people to accomplish the company’s goals. Microenterprises come in three forms : transforming units that aspire to reinvent existing products; incubating units that create entirely new products; and node units that support the others with component products and services. 9 For more, see Gary Hamel and Michele Zanini, “The end of bureaucracy,” Harvard Business Review , November–December 2018, hbr.org.

Another intriguing approach is the “ helix organization .” In this model, reporting is split into two separate, parallel lines of accountability—one focused on stability, the other on speed. To achieve the former, a function-oriented capabilities manager oversees an employee’s long-term career path and skills development. For the latter, a market-facing “value manager” sets priorities and provides day-to-day oversight, ensuring that people can be deployed as flexibly as needed to meet priorities. This model allows for nimble reallocation of people while avoiding the confusions of traditional dual reporting.

The vision of the future that these examples suggest is one in which organizational structure no longer focuses on boxes and lines. Instead, it centers on connectivity—on who works on what with whom. Future-ready organizations require models that are designed, nurtured, and grown around people and activities. Furthermore, advances in digital technology mean that bosses in the years ahead can become true coaches and enablers—not micromanagers—across larger spans of control (1:30 ratios of manager to employee are imaginable, versus much smaller ratios). When companies have a strong identity informing their priorities and ways of working, responsibilities and clear decision rights can empower frontline staff to make decisions in real time.

Finally, rethinking structure means rethinking teams. Many companies have established networks of teams that are empowered to operate outside current structures, take over some critical operations, and deal with rapidly evolving situations. Companies such as Google follow a “non-zero-sum” management approach in which the development of lines of communication running in all directions is more important than reporting relationships. 10 For more, see James L. Heskett, W. Earl Sasser, and Joe Wheeler, The Ownership Quotient: Putting the Service Profit Chain to Work for Unbeatable Competitive Advantage , Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Publishing, 2008. Such teams bring together cross-functional skills and a wide range of experience while avoiding the usual baggage that comes with more hierarchical mindsets. The teams can act fast because they are flexible. They form, disband, reshape, and experiment as they learn lessons, make and correct mistakes, and try new approaches.

Imperative 5: Turbocharge decision making

A recent McKinsey survey found that organizations that make decisions quickly are twice as likely as slow decision makers to make high-quality decisions. Organizations that consistently decide fast and well are, in turn, more likely to outperform their peers. However, only one in three survey respondents said their organizations consistently make fast, high-quality decisions .

Achieving quality and speed in tandem takes work. It requires a system that properly allocates decisions to the right executives, teams, individuals, or even algorithms. The top team needs to focus its time and energy on the core business decisions that only it can make, such as those initiatives central to the value agenda. Other leaders, meanwhile, should spend more time deciding on resource and talent allocation for those initiatives. Top of mind for everyone should be who is working on what. Through managing the backlog of resources from the top of the house, organizations will speed up and increase the quality of decisions.

Many decisions and processes require less than half the steps executives imagine are necessary.

To prepare for the future, many companies will need to reset their default mode by developing a bias for action and the ability to differentiate between crosscutting and delegable decisions. The great majority of decisions should be delegated to the lowest levels possible, giving employees at the company’s edges agency and accountability for decisions they are equipped, and best placed, to make. For example, most of Alibaba’s operating decisions are made by small teams informed by machine learning and creative applications of data. 11 For more, see Ming Zeng, “Alibaba and the future of business,” Harvard Business Review , September–October 2018, hbr.org. The company’s C-level executives focus on crosscutting decisions, including resource allocation for top initiatives. Many decisions and processes require less than half the steps executives imagine are necessary. This kind of streamlining is vital to increasing decision speed.

Leading organizations also rightsize the number of decision makers and critical voices involved in a decision. Each participant should be purposefully included, with a clear eye to removing decision “spectators” or others without a critical role in the process. Who has a vote? Who has a voice? Notably, clarity on this does not necessarily mean limiting the number of people involved or removing diverse perspectives. It just means ensuring that there is a strong reason for each participant to be present.

The COVID-19 crisis has forced companies to “turbocharge” decision making out of necessity. For example, Sysco, the largest US food distribution company, pivoted its core business in only a few weeks to provide services to the retail grocery sector by leveraging its supply-chain expertise. 12 For more, see “Sysco pivoting support to help US retail grocers keep shelves in stock,” Warehouse Automation, March 25, 2020, warehouseautomation.ca. As an executive at another company confided during the early days of the pandemic, “We are making a month’s worth of decisions every day at the moment.” Such examples suggest that companies do have the muscles to accelerate decision making. Now they must strengthen and flex those muscles, embedding what they’re learning from the crisis into redesigned decision-making processes for the future.

Imperative 6: Treat talent as scarcer than capital

The world of work is changing fast. Some jobs are being replaced by automation while others, facilitated by technology platforms, are becoming more globally dispersed. These changes are leading many companies to rethink their talent strategy. Top companies will anchor the effort to a bedrock principle: our talent is our scarcest resource. Then they’ll zero in on three core questions: What talent do we need? How can we attract it? And how can we manage talent most effectively to deliver on our value agenda?

Thirty-nine percent of survey respondents said they have turned down a job because of an organization’s perceived lack of inclusion.

Answering the first question (What talent do we need?) will be devilishly hard for companies that haven’t yet taken the time to create a value agenda. Our research finds that a substantial amount of value in organizations is linked to as few as 25 to 50 roles, many of which aren’t at senior levels of the company. Leaders must know what those roles are. If they don’t, they may be wasting top talent on roles that can’t deliver outsize value.

Creating an attractive destination for top talent means fostering an inclusive employee experience. This influences whether employees stay and thrive, which in turn affects the company’s bottom line. A recent McKinsey global survey  found that 39 percent of respondents said they have turned down a job or decided not to pursue one because of an organization’s perceived lack of inclusion. And other McKinsey research finds that companies in the top quartile for racial/ethnic diversity and gender diversity at the executive level are 36 and 25 percent more likely  to have above-average profitability, respectively, than companies in the bottom quartile.

When it comes to performance management, senior executives can learn from companies such as Netflix, which says it prioritizes having “stars” in every position and at every level. While this statement might sound like an empty motto at another company, for Netflix it serves a valuable need: the company’s highly autonomous culture would suffer with the wrong people in place. To decrease the odds of this happening, Netflix actively counsels out “adequate” performers .

Finally, future-ready companies see that talent ecosystems often allow for the best management and allocation of top talent. In some cases, companies rely on tech-enabled marketplaces to better match skills to projects. Such talent ecosystems can even reach beyond traditional corporate boundaries. For example, Cisco’s Networking Academy offers self-paced IT training and skills development to prepare students for a range of tech-related roles and then connects them to job opportunities, including with external partners. Participants benefit from greater opportunities for career advancement. But Cisco wins, as well, by tapping into a larger pool of talent empowered with specific skills the company prioritizes.

How to operate faster (and flatter)

Learn more about how companies can redesign the way they operate—and optimize for speed.

The helix organization

Separating people-leadership tasks from day-to-day business leadership can help organizations strike a better balance between centralization and decentralization, reduce complexity, and embrace agility.

To weather a crisis, build a network of teams

This dynamic and collaborative team structure can tackle an organization’s most pressing problems quickly. Here are four steps to make it happen.

Want a better decision? Plan a better meeting

Effective meetings produce better business decisions. Yet too many decision meetings are doomed from the get-go. You can do better.

Three steps to create more value through talent

Companies that manage talent the same way they do financial capital can gain a competitive advantage.

How we grow: Build for scale

Organizations cannot simply hardwire decisions about their identity or operating models and declare victory. As connectivity and automation increase, and as the expectations of younger generations change, businesses must be prepared for nimble and constant adaptation if they hope to grow with any consistency.

Doing so entails constant interaction with stakeholders, technology, and employees. The best way to ensure this is by harnessing a vibrant ecosystem of partners outside the company’s traditional boundaries, building data-rich technology platforms that support growth and innovation, and accelerating learning to fuel the talent engine they’ll need to succeed.

Imperative 7: Adopt an ecosystem view

In 2014, Tesla made the seemingly radical decision to open source its patents and encourage other companies to use its intellectual property. In retrospect, that choice is a brilliant model of the ecosystem-oriented decisions that all future-ready companies must make. Tesla recognized that it couldn’t grow without partners that would build charging stations and offer services to create the infrastructure to support electric vehicles. By putting itself at the center of a burgeoning ecosystem of partners, Tesla laid the groundwork for its own explosive growth.

A substantial amount of value in organizations is linked to as few as 25 to 50 roles.

Future-proof organizations will take such examples to heart, recognizing that traditional understandings about what an organization is and where its boundaries lie are being upended. The old thinking was all about gaining leverage and controlling the supply chain. Increasingly, however, value is created through networks where partners share data, code, and skills; where communities of businesses create value and antifragility together.

The underlying recognition that top companies embrace (and that laggards struggle to accept) is that the sources of value will be constantly changing—in ways that can’t be tapped solely by a company’s traditional, core business. Successful companies need to excel at blurring boundaries, taking a systems view rather than a mechanistic one, and embracing fluidity over fixed plans.

Future-ready organizations view partners as extensions of themselves. These relationships feature porous boundaries and high levels of trust and mutual dependence to share value and let each partner focus on what it does best. For example, Amazon encouraged the formation of new delivery start-ups by launching a last-mile delivery program that offered top-performing employees seed money, leased vans, and training. While these delivery-system partners are self-employed, Amazon views them as both an extension of their logistics ecosystem and a new form of homegrown partnership. 13 For more, see Sarah Perez, “Amazon offers employees $10K and 3 months’ pay to start their own delivery businesses,” Tech Crunch, May 13, 2019, techcrunch.com.

Partnerships should be cultivated for the long term to better develop the antifragility that helps partners weather shocks. For example, Johnson & Johnson’s JLABS provides support and resources on compliance, markets, science, and other topics to promising start-ups. By doing so, the company supports and develops relationships with entrepreneurs on the “fragile front lines of innovation.” 14 For more, see Amirah Al Idrus, “J&J, BARDA pick 7 startups to back in fight against COVID-19—and beyond,” FierceBiotech, August 27, 2020, fiercebiotech.com. Instead of transactional, win–lose relationships, models such as this one embrace partnerships motivated by shared success.

Imperative 8: Build data-rich tech platforms

Future-proof companies take data seriously. For them, data isn’t simply about reporting what is happening in the business or answering a business question. Data is the business.

The rise of Netflix is a case in point, as demonstrated in its transformation from a small, mail-in provider of DVDs to a multifaceted global platform, streaming service, and content creator. Netflix achieved its growth by leveraging its user data in the powerful algorithms that created its recommendation engine. 15 For more, see N. Venkat Venkatraman “Netflix: A case of transformation for the digital future,” Medium, April 16, 2017, medium.com. The company’s recommender system now accounts for 80 percent of time customers spend streaming Netflix content. 16 For more, see David Chong, “Deep dive into Netflix’s recommender system,” Towards Data Science, April 30, 2020, towardsdatascience.com. Future-ready companies understand that data can continually empower decisions and the value agenda in unexpected, yet promising, ways.

To make the most of data, leading organizations must tackle a complex set of tasks. They must create compelling approaches to data governance , redesign processes as modular applications, tap the benefits of scalable cloud-based technology, and support all this through variable-cost technology budgets that are reallocated dynamically. By seizing upon data’s ability to connect and scale, these companies will be able to develop new products, services, and even businesses in fast release-and-upgrade cycles—much as Tesla updates its products over the air several times a year. 17 For more, see Marci Houghlen, “How often does the Tesla Model 3 update itself?” MotorBiscuit, May 4, 2020, motorbiscuit.com.

Imperative 9: Accelerate learning as an organization

Capitalizing on new approaches to data requires modern DevOps skills, as well as other capabilities that will be new to most leaders. This underscores the urgency of the final organizational imperative, the one that helps make the others go: accelerate learning. Companies need to get learning right to fuel their talent engine and create an empowered workforce that’s fluent in the art of “fail fast, learn, repeat.” 18 The world needs it too. The calls for massive workforce reskilling have never been this palpable—according to the OECD, almost one-third of all jobs worldwide will be transformed by technology in the next decade. For more, see Saadia Zahidi, “We need a global reskilling revolution—here’s why,” World Economic Forum, January 22, 2020, weforum.org. High-performing companies promote a mindset of continuous learning that encourages and supports people to adapt and reinvent themselves to meet shifting needs.

Experiment-and-learn environments encourage accelerated personal growth and improvement for employees.

Getting to this level requires instilling a growth mindset, curiosity , and an openness to experimentation and failure. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella describes it as hypothesis testing. “Instead of saying ‘I have an idea,’” Nadella observes, “what if you said, ‘I have a new hypothesis, let’s go test it, see if it’s valid, ask how quickly can we validate it.’ And if it’s not valid, move on to the next one.” 19 Krzysztof Majdan and Michal Wasowski, “We sat down with Microsoft’s CEO to discuss the past, present and future of the company,” Business Insider, April 20, 2017, businessinsider.com. This approach, and the company’s underlying push to shift its collective mindset from “know it all” to “learn it all,” is emblematic of a learning organization.

Experiment-and-learn environments encourage accelerated personal growth and improvement for employees. They can fuel beneficial innovation, as evidenced by Google’s famous “20 percent time” policy that encourages employees to work on their own ideas for Google 20 percent of the time (this approach contributed to the creation of Gmail and Google Maps, among others). 20 For more, see Bryan Adams, “How Google’s 20 percent rule can make you more productive and energetic,” Inc., December 28, 2016, inc.com. The real value in such programs is that they signal to the organization that learning, experimentation, and innovation are part of everyone’s day job, not something that gets done in a “skunkworks” or other specialized group.

Since traditional educational institutions alone cannot deliver the skills companies will need, organizations need to look inward. Rather than create monolithic centralized programs that people attend before returning to their day job, forward-looking companies will develop learning journeys that have a mix of core and individualized content, delivered when people need it and at requisite scale. 21 For example, see Aaron Pressman, “Can AT&T retrain 100,000 people?,” Fortune , March 13, 2017, fortune.com. And in keeping with the lessons learned during the pandemic, these programs must work in today’s virtual working environments .

How to grow, adapt, and learn

Learn more about how organizations grow with scale in mind.

Organizing for the future

Platform-based talent markets help put the emphasis in human-capital management back where it belongs—on humans.

Emerge stronger from the COVID-19 crisis by reskilling your workforce now

Adapting employees’ skills and roles to the post-pandemic ways of working will be crucial to building operating-model resilience.

Rethinking the boundaries of your organizational (eco)system

In today’s world, common understandings about what an organization is and who is part of an organization are being upended.

How will your team fare in the future of work?

Automation will leave few roles untouched. Here’s what leaders can do now to give their talent, and their organizations, the best opportunity to thrive in an uncertain future.

Into the future

For most organizations, the COVID-19 pandemic and its aftermath have upended life as we knew it. The resulting pain, grief, and economic dislocation will be felt long into the future. The first priority for leaders, therefore, is to lead with empathy and compassion as they revitalize, and reenergize, their exhausted teams and organizations.

As companies face up to an uncertain, postcrisis landscape, we urge them to recall Albert Einstein’s encouragement that “in the midst of every crisis, lies great opportunity.” As organizations move from a mindset of coping to one of competing , the best companies will seize the unique unfreezing opportunity before them to imagine—and create—new systems and modes of organization that are more flexible, integrated, resilient, and ultimately, more human. These organizations will view themselves as interconnected systems that seek to constantly experiment, fail, learn, grow—and start the process anew when the world invariably changes again.

Aaron De Smet is a senior partner in McKinsey’s New Jersey office, Chris Gagnon is a senior partner in the Austin office, and Elizabeth Mygatt is an associate partner in the Boston office.

The authors wish to thank Selin Neseliler, Richard Steele, and Jessica Zehren for their contributions to this article.

This article was edited by Tom Fleming, deputy editor in chief in the Chicago office.

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How to Do Strategic Planning Like a Futurist

You don’t need a time line; you need a time cone.

Chief strategy officers and those responsible for shaping the direction of their organizations are often asked to facilitate “visioning” meetings. This helps teams brainstorm ideas, but it isn’t a substitute for critical thinking about the future. Neither are the one-, three-, or five-year strategic plans that have become a staple within most organizations, though they are useful for addressing short-term operational goals. Futurists think about time differently, and company strategists could learn from their approach. For any given uncertainty about the future — whether that’s risk, opportunity, or growth — we tend to think in the short- and long-term simultaneously. To do this, consider using a framework that doesn’t rely on linear timelines or simply mark the passage of time as quarters or years. Instead, use a time cone that measures certainty and charts actions.

I recently helped a large industrial manufacturing company with its strategic planning process. With so much uncertainty surrounding autonomous vehicles, 5G, robotics, global trade, and the oil markets, the company’s senior leaders needed a set of guiding objectives and strategies linking the company’s future to the present day. Before our work began in earnest, executives had already decided on a title for the initiative: Strategy 2030.

• Amy Webb is a quantitative futurist, CEO of Future Today Institute, and professor of strategic foresight at the New York University Stern School of Business. She is the author of The Signals Are Talking: Why Today’s Fringe Is Tomorrow’s Mainstream ,  The Big Nine: How the Tech Titans and Their Thinking Machines Could Warp Humanity , and The Genesis Machine: Our Quest to Rewrite Life in the Age of Synthetic Biology .

Partner Center

How to Write a Five-Year Business Plan

Noah Parsons

15 min. read

Updated October 27, 2023

Learn why the traditional way of writing a five-year business plan is often a waste of time and how to use a one-page plan instead for smarter, easier strategic planning to establish your long-term vision. 

In business, it can sometimes seem hard enough to predict what’s going to happen next month, let alone three or even five years from now. But, that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t plan for the long term. After all, your vision for the future is what gets you out of bed in the morning and motivates your team. It’s those aspirations that drive you to keep innovating and figuring out how to grow.

• What is a long-term plan?

A long-term or long-range business plan looks beyond the traditional 3-year planning window, focusing on what a business might look like 5 or even 10 years from now. A traditional 5-year business plan includes financial projections, business strategy, and roadmaps that stretch far into the future.

I’ll be honest with you, though—for most businesses, long-range business plans that stretch 5 and 10 years into the future are a waste of time. Anyone who’s seriously asking you for one doesn’t know what they’re doing and is wasting your time. Sorry if that offends some people, but it’s true.

However, there is still real value in looking at the long term. Just don’t invest the time in creating a lengthy version of your business plan with overly detailed metrics and milestones for the next five-plus years. No one knows the future and, more than likely, anything you write down now could be obsolete in the next year, next month, or even next week. 

That’s where long-term strategic planning comes in. A long-term business plan like this is different from a traditional business plan in that it’s lighter on the details and more focused on your strategic direction. It has less focus on financial forecasting and a greater focus on the big picture. 

Think of your long-term strategic plan as your aspirational vision for your business. It defines the ideal direction you’re aiming for but it’s not influencing your day-to-day or, potentially, even your monthly decision making. 

• Are long-term business plans a waste of time?

No one knows the future. We’re all just taking the information that we have available today and making our best guesses about the future. Sometimes trends in a market are pretty clear and your guesses will be well-founded. Other times, you’re trying to look around a corner and hoping that your intuition about what comes next is correct.

Now, I’m not saying that thinking about the future is a waste of time. Entrepreneurs are always thinking about the future. They have to have some degree of faith and certainty about what customers are going to want in the future. Successful entrepreneurs do actually predict the future — they know what customers are going to want and when they’re going to want it.

Entrepreneurship is unpredictable 

Successful entrepreneurs are also often wrong. They make mistakes just like the rest of us. The difference between successful entrepreneurs and everyone else is that they don’t let mistakes slow them down. They learn from mistakes, adjust and try again. And again. And again. It’s not about being right all the time; it’s about having the perseverance to keep trying until you get it right. For example, James Dyson, inventor of the iconic vacuum cleaner, tried out 5,126 prototypes of his invention before he found a design that worked.

So, if thinking about the future isn’t a waste of time, why are 5-year business plans a waste of time? They’re a waste of time because they typically follow the same format as a traditional business plan, where you are asked to project sales, expenses, and cash flow 5 and 10 years into the future. 

Let’s be real. Sales and expense projections that far into the future are just wild guesses, especially for startups and new businesses. They’re guaranteed to be wrong and can’t be used for anything. You can’t (and shouldn’t) make decisions based on these guesses. They’re just fantasy. You hope you achieve massive year-over-year growth in sales, but there’s no guarantee that’s going to happen. And, you shouldn’t make significant spending decisions today based on the hope of massive sales 10 years from now.

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• Why write a long-term business plan?

So, what is the purpose of outlining a long-term plan? Here are a few key reasons why it’s still valuable to consider the future of your business without getting bogged down by the details.

Showcase your vision for investors

First, and especially important if you are raising money from investors, is your vision. Investors will want to know not only where you plan on being in a year, but where the business will be in five years. Do you anticipate launching new products or services? Will you expand internationally? Or will you find new markets to grow into? 

Set long-term goals for your business

Second, you’ll want to establish goals for yourself and your team. What kinds of high-level sales targets do you hope to achieve? How big is your company going to get overtime? These goals can be used to motivate your team and even help in the hiring process as you get up and running.

That said, you don’t want to overinvest in fleshing out all the details of a long-range plan. You don’t need to figure out exactly how your expansion will work years from now or exactly how much you’ll spend on office supplies five years from now. That’s really just a waste of time.

Instead, for long-range planning, think in broad terms. A good planning process means that you’re constantly revising and refining your business plan. You’ll add more specifics as you go, creating a detailed plan for the next 6-12 months and a broader, vague plan for the long term.

You have a long development time

Businesses with extremely long research and development timelines do make spending decisions now based on the hope of results years from now. For example, the pharmaceutical industry and medical device industry have to make these bets all the time. The R&D required to take a concept from idea to proven product with regulatory approval can take years for these industries, so long-range planning in these cases is a must. A handful of other industries also have similar development timelines, but these are the exceptions, not the rule.

Your business is well-established and predictable 

Long-term, detailed planning can make more sense for businesses that are extremely well established and have long histories of consistent sales and expenses with predictable growth. But, even for those businesses, predictability means quite the opposite of stability. The chances that you’ll be disrupted in the marketplace by a new company, or the changing needs and desires of your customers, is extremely high. So, most likely, those long-range predictions of sales and profits are pretty useless.

• What a 5-year plan should look like

With the exception of R&D-heavy businesses, most 5-year business plans should be more like vision statements than traditional business plans. They should explain your vision for the future, but skip the details of detailed sales projections and expense budgets. 

Your vision for your business should explain the types of products and services that you hope to offer in the future and the types of customers that you hope to serve. Your plan should outline who you plan to serve now and how you plan to expand if you are successful.

This kind of future vision creates a strategic roadmap. It’s not a fully detailed plan with sales forecasts and expense budgets, but a plan for getting started and then growing over time to reach your final destination.

For example, here’s a short-form version of what a long-term plan for Nike might have looked like if one had been written in the 1960s:

Nike will start by developing high-end track shoes for elite athletes. We’ll start with a focus on the North West of the US, but expand nationally as we develop brand recognition among track and field athletes. We will use sponsored athletes to spread the word about the quality and performance of our shoes. Once we have success in the track & field market segment, we believe that we will be able to successfully expand both beyond the US market and also branch out into other sports, with an initial focus on basketball.

Leadership and brand awareness in a sport such as basketball will enable us to cross over from the athlete market into the consumer market. This will lead to significant business growth in the consumer segment and allow for expansion into additional sports, fashion, and casual markets in addition to building a strong apparel brand.

Interestingly enough, Nike (to my knowledge) never wrote out a long-range business plan. They developed their plans as they grew, building the proverbial airplane as it took off.

But, if you have this kind of vision for your business, it’s useful to articulate it. Your employees will want to know what your vision is and your investors will want to know as well. They want to know that you, as an entrepreneur, are looking beyond tomorrow and into the future months and years ahead.

• How to write a five-year business plan

Writing out your long-term vision for your business is a useful exercise. It can bring a sense of stability and solidify key performance indicators and broad milestones that drive your business. 

Developing a long-range business plan is really just an extension of your regular business planning process. A typical business plan covers the next one to three years, documenting your target market, marketing strategy, and product or service offerings for that time period. 

A five-year plan expands off of that initial strategy and discusses what your business might do in the years to come. However, as I’ve mentioned before, creating a fully detailed five-year business plan will be a waste of time. 

Here’s a quick guide to writing a business plan that looks further into the future without wasting your time:

1. Develop your one-page plan

As with all business planning, we recommend that you start with a one-page business plan. It provides a snapshot of what you’re hoping to achieve in the immediate term by outlining your core business strategy, target market, and business model.

A one-page plan is the foundation of all other planning because it’s the document that you’ll keep the most current. It’s also the easiest to update and share with business partners. You will typically highlight up to three years of revenue and profit goals as well as milestones that you hope to achieve in the near term.

Check out our guide to building your one-page plan and download a free template to get started.

2. Determine if you need a traditional business plan

Unlike a one-page business plan, a traditional business plan is more detailed and is typically written in long-form prose. A traditional business plan is usually 10-20 pages long and contains details about your product or service, summaries of the market research that you’ve conducted, and details about your competition. Read our complete guide to writing a business plan .

Companies that write traditional business plans typically have a “business plan event” where a complete business plan is required. Business plan events are usually part of the fundraising process. During fundraising, lenders and investors may ask to see a detailed plan and it’s important to be ready if that request comes up. 

But there are other good reasons to write a detailed business plan. A detailed plan forces you to think through the details of your business and how, exactly, you’re going to build your business. Detailed plans encourage you to think through your business strategy, your target market, and your competition carefully. A good business plan ensures that your strategy is complete and fleshed out, not just a collection of vague ideas.

A traditional business plan is also a good foundation for a long-term business plan and I recommend that you expand your lean business plan into a complete business plan if you intend to create plans for more than three years into the future.

3. Develop long-term goals and growth targets

As you work on your business plan, you’ll need to think about where you want to be in 5+ years. A good exercise is to envision what your business will look like. How many employees will you have? How many locations will you serve? Will you introduce new products and services? 

When you’ve envisioned where you want your business to be, it’s time to turn that vision into a set of goals that you’ll document in your business plan. Each section of your business plan will be expanded to highlight where you want to be in the future. For example, in your target market section, you will start by describing your initial target market. Then you’ll proceed to describe the markets that you hope to reach in 3-5 years.

To accompany your long-term goals, you’ll also need to establish revenue targets that you think you’ll need to meet to achieve your goals. It’s important to also think about the expenses you’re going to incur in order to grow your business. 

For long-range planning, I recommend thinking about your expenses in broad buckets such as “marketing” and “product development” without getting bogged down in too much detail. Think about what percentage of your sales you’ll spend on each of these broad buckets. For example, marketing spending might be 20% of sales. 

4. Develop a 3-5 year strategic plan

Your goals and growth targets are “what” you want to achieve. Your strategy is “how” you’re going to achieve it.

Use your business plan to document your strategy for growth. You might be expanding your product offering, expanding your market, or some combination of the two. You’ll need to think about exactly how this process will happen over the next 3-5 years. 

A good way to document your strategy is to use milestones. These are interim goals that you’ll set to mark your progress along the way to your larger goal. For example, you may have a goal to expand your business nationally from your initial regional presence. You probably won’t expand across the country all at once, though. Most likely, you’ll expand into certain regions one at a time and grow to have a national presence over time. Your strategy will be the order of the regions that you plan on expanding into and why you pick certain regions over others.

Your 3-5 year strategy may also include what’s called an “exit strategy”. This part of a business plan is often required if you’re raising money from investors. They’ll want to know how they’ll eventually get their money back. An “exit” can be the sale of your business or potentially going public. A typical exit strategy will identify potential acquirers for your business and will show that you’ve thought about how your business might be an attractive purchase.

5. Tie your long-term plan to your one-page plan

As your business grows, you can use your long-term business plan as your north star. Your guide for where you want to end up. Use those goals to steer your business in the right direction, making small course corrections as you need to. 

You’ll reflect those smaller course corrections in your one-page plan. Because it is a simple document and looks at the shorter term, it’s easier to update. The best way to do this is to set aside a small amount of time to review your plan once a month. You’ll review your financial forecast, your milestones, and your overall strategy. If things need to change, you can make those adjustments. Nothing ever goes exactly to plan, so it’s OK to make corrections as you go.

You may find that your long-term plan may also need corrections as you grow your business. You may learn things about your market that change your initial assumptions and impacts your long-range plan. This is perfectly normal. Once a quarter or so, zoom out and review your long-range plan. If you need to make corrections to your strategy and goals, that’s fine. Just keep your plan alive so that it gives you the guidance that you need over time. 

• Vision setting is the purpose of long-term planning

Part of what makes entrepreneurs special is that they have a vision. They have dreams for where they want their business to go. A 5-year business plan should be about documenting that vision for the future and how your business will capitalize on that vision.

So, if someone asks you for your 5-year business plan. Don’t scramble to put together a sales forecast and budget for 5 years from now. Your best guess today will be obsolete tomorrow. Instead, focus on your vision and communicate that. 

Explain where you think your business is going and what you think the market is going to be like 5 years from now. Explain what you think customers are going to want and where trends are headed and how you’re going to be there to sell the solution to the problems that exist in 5 and 10 years. Just skip the invented forecasts and fantasy budgets.

Noah is the COO at Palo Alto Software, makers of the online business plan app LivePlan. He started his career at Yahoo! and then helped start the user review site Epinions.com. From there he started a software distribution business in the UK before coming to Palo Alto Software to run the marketing and product teams.

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Blog Business 15+ Best Business Plan Examples for Entrepreneurs & Startups

15+ Best Business Plan Examples for Entrepreneurs & Startups

Written by: Jennifer Gaskin Jun 09, 2021

Not having a solid plan makes it unlikely for you to achieve the goals you seek, whether it’s getting your to-do list done or launching a successful organization.

In the early stages of a company, that means developing things like pitch decks, business plans, one-sheeters and more. With Venngage’s Business Plan Builder , you can easily organize your business plan into a visually appealing format that can help you win over investors, lenders or partners.

Learn more about how to create a business plan so you can hit the ground running after reading through this list for inspirational business plan templates .

15+ Best business plan examples for entrepreneurs and startups

Simple business plan example, startup business plan example, small business plan example, nonprofit business plan example, strategic business plan example, market analysis business plan example, sales business plan example, organization and management business plan example, marketing and sales strategy business plan example, apple business plan example, airbnb business plan example, sequoia capital business plan example.

While your business plan should be supported by thorough and exhaustive research into your market and competitors, the resulting document does not have to be overwhelming for the reader. In fact, if you can boil your business plan down to a few key pages, all the better.

Simple business plan outline:

• Table of contents : List all sections and sub-sections within the business plan.
• Business review : Include an overview of the business’s purpose, history, and key objectives.
• The market : Analyze the target market, including customer demographics and market needs.
• The competition : Evaluate the main competitors and their strengths and weaknesses in the market.

The simple, bold visual aesthetic of this  business plan template  pairs well with the straightforward approach to the content and various elements of the business plan itself.

Use Venngage’s My Brand Kit  to automatically add your brand colors and fonts to your business plan with just a few clicks.

An essential startup business plan should include a clear and compelling value proposition, market analysis, competitive analysis, target audience identification, financial projections, and a well-defined marketing and operational strategy.

For a typical startup, the need to appear disruptive in the industry is important. After all, if you’re not offering anything truly new, why would an investor turn their attention toward your organization. That means establishing a problem and the ways in which you solve it right away.

Startup business plan outline:

• The problem : Identify the specific issue or pain point your startup aims to solve.
• Target market & opportunity : Define your customers and the potential market size.
• The solution : Describe the product or service that addresses the identified problem.
• Traction and validation/roadmap : Outline the progress made so far and the future milestones and goals.

Whether it’s a full-scale business plan or, in this case, a pitch deck, the ideal way for a startup to make a splash with its plans is to be bold. This successful business plan example is memorable and aspirational.

In the Venngage editor, you can upload images of your business. Add these images to your plans and reports to make them uniquely your own.

All businesses start out small at first, but that doesn’t mean their communications have to be small. One of the best ways to get investors, lenders and talent on board is to show that you’ve done your due diligence.

Small business plan outline:

• Table of contents : List down of all the sections and sub-sections in the business plan.
• Business overview : Include a quick overview of what your business is all about, including your mission and goals.
• The market : Analyzes who your customers are, what they need, and how big the market is.
• The competition : Look into your main competitors and what they’re good at (and not so good at).
• Sales and marketing plan : Lay out your game plan for attracting and keeping customers.
• Operating plan : Explain how you’ll run the day-to-day operations and manage the business.

In this small business plan example, the content is spread over many pages, which is useful in making lengthy, in-depth research feel less like a chore than packing everyone on as few pages as possible.

Organizations that set out to solve problems rather than earning profits also benefit from creating compelling business plans that stir an emotional response in potential donors, benefactors, potential staff members or even media.

Nonprofit business plan outline:

• Table of contents : Lists all sections and sub-sections of your nonprofit business plan.
• Introduction : Provide an overview of your mission and purpose.
• Goal : State the specific objectives your nonprofit organization aims to achieve.
• Impact & strategy : Explain how you plan to create positive change and the methods you will use.

Simplicity is the goal for nonprofits when it comes to business plans, particularly in their early days. Explain the crisis at hand and exactly how your organization will make a difference, which will help donors visualize how their money will be used to help.

Business plans are also helpful for companies that have been around for a while. Whether they’re considering new products to launch or looking for new opportunities, companies can approach business plans from the strategy side of the equation as well.

Strategic business plan outline:

• The problem, issue, or job at hand : Define the specific challenge or task the strategic plan addresses.
• Approach & methodology : Describe the methods and strategies that will be used to tackle the problem or achieve the objective.

Strategic business plans or strategy infographics should be highly focused on a single area or problem to be solved rather than taking a holistic approach to the entire business. Expanding scope too much can make a strategy seem too difficult to implement.

Easily share your business plan with Venngage’s multiple download options, including PNG, PNG HD, and as an interactive PDF.

One-page business plan example

For organizations with a simple business model, often a one-page business plan is all that’s needed. This is possible in any industry, but the most common are traditional ones like retail, where few complex concepts need to be explained.

This one-page strategic business plan example could be easily replicated for an organization that offers goods or services across multiple channels or one with three core business areas. It’s a good business plan example for companies whose plans can be easily boiled down to a few bullet points per area.

Especially when entering a saturated market, understanding the landscape and players is crucial to understanding how your organization can fit it—and stand out. That’s why centering your business plan around a market analysis is often a good idea.

Market analysis business plan outline:

• Table of contents : Lists all sections and sub-sections of the market analysis business plan.
• Executive summary : Provide a brief overview of the key points of the market analysis.
• Business overview : Summarize your business’s mission, vision and core activities.
• The market : Analyze the target market, including customer demographics and market trends.
• The competition : Review the main competitors and their market positioning.
• Sales & marketing plan : Outline strategies for reaching and engaging customers.
• Operating plan : Details the day-to-day operations and management structure.

In this example, the majority of the content and about half the pages are focused on the market analysis, including competitors, trends, pricing, demographics and more. This successful business plan example ensures the artwork and style used perfectly matches the company’s aesthetic, which further reinforces its position in the market.

You can find more memorable business plan templates to customize in the Venngage editor. Browse Venngage’s  business plan templates  to find plans that work for you and start editing.

Company description business plan example

Depending on the market, focusing on your company story and what makes you different can drive your narrative home with potential investors. By focusing your business plan on a company description, you center yourself and your organization in the minds of your audience.

Company description business plan outline:

• Executive summary : Briefly summarize the key components and objectives of the company description section.
• Approach & direction : Outline the company’s strategy, goals and the direction it intends to take in achieving them.

This abbreviated plan is a good business plan example. It uses most of the content to tell the organization’s story. In addition to background about the company, potential investors or clients can see how this design firm’s process is different from their rivals.

With Venngage Business , you can collaborate with team members in real-time to create a business plan that will be effective when presenting to investors.

Five-year business plan example

For most startups or young companies, showing potential investors or partners exactly how and when the company will become profitable is a key aspect of presenting a business plan. Whether it’s woven into a larger presentation or stands alone, you should be sure to include your five-year business plan so investors know you’re looking far beyond the present.

With Venngage’s Business Plan Builder , you can customize a schedule like this to quickly illustrate for investors or partners what your revenue targets are for the first three to five years your company is in operation.

The lifeblood of any company is the sales team. These are the energetic folks who bring in new business, develop leads and turn prospects into customers. Focusing your energy on creating a sales business plan would prove to investors that you understand what will make your company money.

Sales business plan outline:

• Table of contents : List all sections and subsections within the sales business plan.
• Target market : Identify the specific segment or segments of customers the sales efforts will focus on.
• Customer profile : Provide detailed descriptions of the ideal customers, including demographics, preferences and needs.
• Action plan : Outline the specific steps and strategies to be taken to reach and engage the target market and achieve sales objectives.

In this example sales business plan, several facets of ideal buyers are detailed. These include a perfect customer profile that helps to convey to your audience that customer relationships will be at the heart of your operation.

You can include business infographics in your plan to visualize your goals. And with Venngage’s gallery of images and icons, you can customize the template to better reflect your business ethos.

Company mergers and shakeups are also major reasons for organizations to require strong business planning. Creating new departments, deciding which staff to retain and charting a course forward can be even more complex than starting a business from scratch.

Organization and management business plan outline:

• Table of contents : List all sections and subsections within the organization and management business plan.
• About us : Provide an overview of the organization, its mission, vision and values.
• Project summary : Summarize the key details and objectives of the project.
• Project timeline : Outline the milestones and schedule for completing the project.

This organization and management business plan focuses on how the company can optimize operations through a few key organizational projects.

Executive summary for business plan example

Executive summaries give your business plan a strong human touch, and they set the tone for what’s to follow. That could mean having your executive leadership team write a personal note or singling out some huge achievements of which you’re particularly proud in a business plan infographic .

Executive summary business plan outline:

• Table of contents : Lists all sections and subsections within the executive summary business plan.
• Executive summary : Provide a concise overview of the entire business plan, highlighting key points and objectives.
• Statement of problem : Clearly define the specific issue or challenge the business aims to address.
• Approach & methodology : Outline the methods and strategies that will be employed to solve the stated problem or achieve the desired goals.

In this executive summary for a business plan, a brief note is accompanied by a few notable achievements that signal the organization and leadership team’s authority in the industry.

Marketing and sales are two sides of the same coin, and clever companies know how they play off each other. That’s why centering your business plan around your marketing and sales strategy can pay dividends when it comes time to find investors and potential partners.

Marketing and sales strategy business plan outline:

• Table of contents : List all sections and subsections within the marketing and sales strategy business plan.
• Positioning : Describe how the business intends to position its products or services in the market to stand out from competitors.
• Value prop : Highlight the unique value proposition that the business offers to its target customers, including its benefits and advantages.
• Marketing strategy : Outline the overall approach and tactics that will be used to promote the products or services and attract customers.

This marketing and sales business plan example is the picture of a sleek, modern aesthetic, which is appropriate across many industries and will speak volumes to numbers-obsesses sales and marketing leaders.

Do business plans really help? Well, here’s some math for you; in 1981, Apple had just gone public and was in the midst of marketing an absolute flop , the Apple III computer.  The company’s market cap, or total estimated market value,  could hit $3 trillion this year.

Did this Apple business plan make the difference? No, it’s not possible to attribute the success of Apple entirely to this business plan from July 1981, but this ancient artifact goes to show that even the most groundbreaking companies need to take an honest stock of their situation.

Apple’s 1981 business plan example pdf covers everything from the market landscape for computing to the products that founder Steve Jobs expects to roll out over the next few years, and the advanced analysis contained in the document shows how strategic Jobs and other Apple executives were in those early days.

Inviting strangers to stay in your house for the weekend seemed like a crazy concept before Airbnb became one of the world’s biggest companies. Like all disruptive startups, Airbnb had to create a robust, active system from nothing.

Airbnb business plan outline:

• Problem : Identify the specific challenge or need in the accommodation industry that the Airbnb business aims to address.
• Solution : Describe how Airbnb’s platform provides a solution to the identified problem by connecting hosts with guests.
• Market validation : Demonstrate through research or evidence that there is demand for Airbnb’s services.
• Market size : Estimate the total addressable market for Airbnb’s accommodation services.
• Product : Detail the features and functionalities of the Airbnb platform for both hosts and guests.
• Business model : Explain how Airbnb generates revenue and sustains its operations.
• Market adoption : Discuss the rate at which Airbnb’s services are being embraced by hosts and guests.
• Competition : Identify other players in the accommodation industry offering similar services to Airbnb.
• Competitive advantages : Highlight the unique strengths or advantages that set Airbnb apart from its competitors.

As this Airbnb business plan pitch deck example shows, for companies that are introducing entirely new concepts, it’s helpful not to get too into the weeds. Explain the problem simply and boil down the essence of your solution into a few words; in this case, “A web platform where users can rent out their space” perfectly sums up this popular company.

Sequoia Capital is one of the most successful venture capital firms in the world, backing startups that now have a combined stock market value of more than $1 trillion, according to a Forbes analysis .

For young companies and startups that want to play in the big leagues, tailoring your pitch to something that would appeal to a company like Sequoia Capital is a good idea. That’s why the company has a standard business plan format it recommends .

Sequoia capital business plan outline:

• Company purpose : Clarify the core reason for the business and its overarching goals.
• Problems : Identify specific challenges or pain points that the business aims to solve.
• Solution : Describe how the business addresses the identified problems with its products or services.
• Market potential : Assess the size and growth opportunities within the target market for the business.
• Competition : Analyze existing competitors and their strengths and weaknesses in the market.
• Business model : Outline how the business plans to generate revenue and sustain its operations.
• Our team : Introduce the key members of the team and their relevant expertise and experience.
• Financials : Provide projections and forecasts for the financial performance of the business.
• Vision : Articulate the long-term aspirations and goals that the business seeks to achieve.

Using Sequoia Capital’s business plan example means being simple and clear with your content, like the above deck. Note how no slide contains much copy, and even when all slides appear on the screen at once, the text is legible.

Use Venngage to design business plans that will impress investors

Not every business plan, pitch deck or one-sheeter will net you billions in investment dollars, but every entrepreneur should be adept at crafting impressive, authoritative and informative business plans.

Whether you use one of the inspirational templates shared here or you want to go old school and mimic Apple’s 1981 business plan, using Venngage’s Business Plan Builder helps you bring your company’s vision to life.

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A Future Plan for Business: Think Ahead & Build Profits

This article is an excerpt from the Shortform summary of "Zero To One" by Peter Thiel. Shortform has the world's best summaries of books you should be reading.

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What makes a strong future plan for business? How do you form a future plan?

A future plan for business is exactly what it sounds like—creating a path forward for your business. But a future plan for business requires careful thought and planning, and you need to consider both short and long term goals.

Success Comes From a Strong Future Plan for Business

A future plan for business can be hard to create, since you don’t always know what drives success. Businesspeople debate whether success comes from luck or design. Some popular writers and leaders emphasize luck and downplay the importance of design or planning in contributing to success. This makes many people think planning—trying to shape the future—is pointless.

For instance, author Malcolm Gladwell writes in Outliers that success results from “lucky breaks and arbitrary advantages.” Warren Buffett notes that he was lucky to be born with certain qualities. Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates both claim luck played a role in their success.

It’s possible luck could play a role in an individual success, but luck isn’t sufficient to explain how the same person—for instance, Elon Musk, Jack Dorsey, Steve Jobs—could achieve a series of extraordinary, multibillion-dollar successes.

When Dorsey, the founder of Twitter and Square, tweeted in 2013 that “Success is never an accident,” most of the responses were dismissive, citing white male privilege over intelligent planning as the biggest factor in success. However, while connections, wealth, and experience—and luck—can be factors, in recent years, we’ve tended to ignore or overlook the importance of planning and forming a comprehensive company future plan.

In the past, people thought differently. From the Renaissance and the Enlightenment into the 20th century, people believed you made your own luck by working hard. Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote, “Shallow men believe in luck, believe in circumstances … strong men believe in cause and effect.” 

Today, your future business plan, and whether you think of the future as determined by chance or design, affects how you act in the present and whether you ultimately succeed .

A Future Plan for Business Builds Strong Profits

How do you create a future plan for business? One way is figuring out how to form a monopoly.

A monopoly by definition has avoided competition, but to be a great business , there’s more: it must last into the future.

A monopoly can be a part of building your company future plan. To understand how this works, compare the New York Times Company with Twitter. Each employs thousands of people and delivers news to millions. However, in 2013, Twitter was valued at  $24 billion, which was 12 times the Times’ market capitalization. Yet the Times earned $133 million in 2012, while Twitter lost money. How could the money-losing Twitter be worth more than the money-gaining Times? (Shortform note: market capitalization is the total value of a company’s shares of stock.)

The reason for the dramatic difference in value is cash flow— the hallmark of a great business is its ability to generate future cash flow . Investors expected Twitter to generate monopoly profits for the next 10 years, while investors believed the New York Times lacked that ability.

A business’s current value is the sum of the profits it will earn throughout its lifetime. Low-growth businesses are those like newspapers that aren’t expected to grow dramatically in the future—most of their value is near-term. They might retain their value and keep current cash flows for a few years, but competition will erode it in the future. A successful restaurant might be profitable today, but cash flows will dwindle in a few years as new restaurants open.

The pattern is the opposite for tech companies—they often lose money initially and require time to build value. Most of a tech startup’s value will be a decade or more in coming, which needs to be considered in your future business plan.

For example, by March 2001, PayPal hadn’t made a profit, but revenues were growing 100% year over year. Thiel calculated that 75% of the company’s current value would come from profits generated in 2011 and thereafter. However, he underestimated. At the time of this book’s publication in 2014, it appeared most of the company’s value would come from 2020 and beyond.

The Allure of Short-Term Profits

To be valuable, a company has to both grow and persevere. However, many entrepreneurs overemphasize short-term growth because it’s easier to measure than long-term potential. Focusing on short-term metrics, such as user statistics and revenue targets, can keep you from noticing issues affecting future viability. This also makes it difficult to develop a realistic company future plan.

For example, initial rapid growth at Zynga and Groupon distracted managers and investors from long-term challenges. While Zynga did well with the game Farmville at first, the company lacked the ability to produce a consistent stream of entertainment content. Groupon’s online deal website also grew initially as local businesses tried the product, but the company struggled to convert them into repeat customers.

In addition to short-term growth, entrepreneurs must build the business to ensure it will last for a decade or more .

Be a ‘Last Mover’

The “first mover advantage” means getting into a new market first and gaining a substantial share of the market before anyone else gets there.

But moving first is a tactic, not a goal, and should factor into your future business plan. ” Your goal is to generate cash flows for the future. You do this by starting with a small slice of the market (being the first mover) and gradually expanding, dominating each new slice until you own the ultimate market for your product. You want to be the last mover—the one who makes the last spectacular improvement in a market that ensures years of monopoly profits.  

Being a first mover puts you in position to be the last mover .

A future plan for business should cover your plans to maintain profit and to expand. In your future plan for business, you have to establish your goals and your existing business principles.

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Carrie has been reading and writing for as long as she can remember, and has always been open to reading anything put in front of her. She wrote her first short story at the age of six, about a lost dog who meets animal friends on his journey home. Surprisingly, it was never picked up by any major publishers, but did spark her passion for books. Carrie worked in book publishing for several years before getting an MFA in Creative Writing. She especially loves literary fiction, historical fiction, and social, cultural, and historical nonfiction that gets into the weeds of daily life.

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Growth Strategy

Compounding quality value.

Despite all of the noise and challenges over the past 5 years, our system rallied to focus on winning in the marketplace, and drove revenue above the high end of our long-term targets. We leveraged the crisis as a catalyst to accelerate the business transformation that was already underway. And we did that because through it all we stayed clear on our purpose – which is to Refresh the World, and Make a Difference. We kept this front and center because it allowed us in the early years to re-orient our business and drive ourselves forward, and it allowed us to manage through the pandemic. And today, we remain rooted in that strategy, and continue to strive toward driving the topline and generating returns. We identified key objectives to propel us to a growth trajectory – win more consumers, gain share, maintain strong system economics, strengthen our impact across our stakeholders, and equip our organization to win in the future. These remain our north stars as we continue to navigate the uncertain macroenvironment ahead in the near term.

(a) Non-GAAP

Brand Portfolio Optimization

We put deep analysis into our portfolio optimization process to focus on brands that will continue to drive the Total Beverage Company strategy. We undertook the exercise to shape our portfolio of brands in support of our growth agenda and to ensure we emerge from the crisis strongly. We’ve streamlined our portfolio from 400 to 200 master brands, allowing global category teams to identify the greatest country and category combinations which drive the most effective return on our spend. We aspire to achieve a balanced combination of global, regional and local brands, with scale, that have the strongest potential to help us grow our consumer base, increase frequency and drive system margin accretion. We believe we now have a strong portfolio of brands that will enable us to address all drinking moments and we will continue to grow these brands through focused execution and targeted innovation where relevant.         

Note: 2019 data. The two outer donut charts represent the split of brands in terms of 2019 retail value. The innermost donut represents the split in terms of number of brands.

Networked Organization

Our networked organization is coming together and is already changing the way we work – striking the right balance between scale and intimacy. We’ve created global category leads with clear decision rights to modernize our approach to Marketing and Innovation. We’ve established Platform Services to elevate and accelerate data, analytics and insights capabilities in order to accelerate topline and bottom-line growth. This reduces duplication and drives scale. The actions free up time, resources, and energy for growth and facilitate accountability and speed of execution across the frontline areas closest to the consumer.

Brand Building

World-class marketing....

Great marketing begins with human insights – understanding what the consumer wants, making a superior tasting product and through the consumer passion points, telling the brand story in a relatable way. We are shifting our marketing from television experiences, and our new operating structure is wiring us to partner across functions and geographies to create global solutions, enabling us to get even better at what we do best. Coupled with the scale of our new agency partnerships, we feel we’ve never been in a better position to interact with our consumers in end-to-end engagement across mediums outside of traditional media. We believe this will result in more personalized relationships with consumers, adding new drinkers to our brands while allowing for more co-creation and impactful messaging.

(a) Internal estimates for 2023 (b) Change since 2019

… Through Disciplined Resource Allocation

And we will deliver the magic of marketing by being more effective and efficient, fundamentally transforming the way we execute our marketing programs. It means a model that combines commercial prioritization backed by advanced analytics that drives leverage through scale. One area the pandemic fueled us by necessity to reevaluate was our ability to take action with the resources available to us, whether it’s dollars, whether it’s people or whether it’s time.

We always begin our decision-making process from an enterprise view, leveraging the network to focus on what's the most important set of decisions for the enterprise. Our company has invoked a spirit of learning where it's okay to try as long as we learn and iterate better the next time. And last, but certainly not least, we continue to be more data-driven, making great strides turning concepts into real life examples to help drive the growth equation. Across the enterprise, driving a discipline around where we play and how we invest using a very methodical country-category combination algorithm is helping us have confidence that the dollars we're investing can and will generate even greater return.

Complementing our work to build great brands is our disciplined approach to innovation, in order to bring new relevant product or equipment or ideas to the table. Consumer centricity allows us to drive incremental growth through innovation. We are focusing on “more disciplined innovation”, but this does not mean “less innovation”. We are approaching innovation through different lenses and with rigorous objectives: Our pipeline for 2023 has been developed through clear routines and processes to assess the purpose and the right level of innovation. Intelligent experimentation goes beyond new flavors and brands – it also includes product, package and process. It encourages local markets to test the best ideas in a way that enables us to nurture and scale them, allowing us to expand across geographies faster than before.

The digital frontier is vast and has many fronts. Our view of digital is one of an integrated ecosystem of platforms that create value across the digital and physical world. Our digital strategy creates value not only for our consumers and customers but across our organization and our system as well. The pandemic allowed us to accelerate our digital transformation and evolve into an organization that can execute its marketing, commercial, sales and distribution strategy both in the on-line digital world as well as in the physical world.

At the heart of everything lies data, and our recent organizational changes have set us up to leverage data across the enterprise as well as the system. This, combined with cutting-edge digital tools, will facilitate more efficient marketing, strengthen our brands, and improve the execution. 

Revenue Growth Management

It goes without saying that strong innovation and marketing would not take flight without excellence in execution. We have taken several steps in the ongoing evolution of our revenue growth management (RGM) agenda. RGM is a key commercial capability that answers critical business questions of ‘Within the priority categories, where is the revenue? Which pack? Which price tier? Which channel? Which customer? Which competitor?’

RGM focuses on identifying revenue pools (where to play) and revenue growth strategies (how to win). It is a capability with different markets being at different points of the journey, and adjusts based on the business objective and changing landscape.

Digital is beginning to play an integral role in our RGM strategy, providing competitive advantages which allow us to make better, more informed decisions faster, by translating data into actionable insights. Digital is improving our perception both at the consumer experience level as well as at the bottler level, driving improved execution.

RGM is iterative and infinite. Thus, we believe we have a long runway ahead of us.

(a) Comparison vs. 2019

Ultimately our success as a company is dependent upon our success as a system, and our bottlers’ ability to grow and thrive in the marketplace. That is why we went through a tremendous transformation over the past several years to put the bottling operations in the hands of the most capable and strategically aligned partners. We are seeing our transformation yielding results.

For example, in South Africa during 2021, we leveraged learnings from strong reusable performance in Latin America to invest in capabilities and activation driving demand for affordable, refillable PET packages and a universal bottle, driving positive results from a revenue, transaction and value standpoint.

Further, in Germany where collection rates are very high, we utilized refillables to expand premium packages for at-home occasions through development of a highly sustainable returnable glass bottle – again driving positive results across metrics.

Note: Data comparisons are 2021 vs 2019 (a) Revenue per unit case and transactions for refillables in South Africa (b) Revenue per unit case for sparkling soft drink refillable glass bottles in Germany

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You are here: Home » Home » How to Plan for Your Company’s Future

• How to Plan for Your Company’s Future
• Home , Thinking

Connie Williams, CMO & General Partner Synecticsworld

By Connie Williams

One of the biggest problems facing companies and other organizations is how to plan for the future. What to invest in? Where to place your bets? We don’t have the ability to perfectly predict the future; but we do have the creative thinking skills and behaviors to build an imaginative look at the future and to help companies create powerful future scenarios and plan appropriate implications create powerful future scenarios and plan appropriate implications.

The only way to be successful is to be able to build new, advantaged knowledge – what others do not know but we discover through powerful designs. We also want to discover the unknown future opportunities – what we don’t know we don’t know.

• Insight is about current needs and wants of the market place,
• Foresight is both discovering and creating the longer term future needs and wants of the marketplace.

Organizations need to be inspired beyond pure trend extrapolation.  It’s the only way to have a powerful impact on future consumer and customer behaviors, thus profoundly changing the needs they may have for products and services.  Foresight process looks at long term trends both regionally and globally and also should include individual catalyst, expert and provocateur stimulus which are designed and selected to challenge and shift future expectations. Senior leaders need to be facilitated in “force-fitting” disparate and emerging aspects of cultural, social, political and technological evolution to break through their own filters in order to imaginatively create alternative future scenarios. A strong Foresight approach explores the contradictions and paradox in market data to build unexpected future scenarios – rather than ignoring that which is disparate.

While we can’t completely predict the future – we can certainly be prepared with the right competencies and expectations if we face it, creatively, with an open mind and a powerful imagination.

This article is an updated version of  Connie’s What’s Next, Foresight chapter of Imagine That! 

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We wanted to share this piece by Bob Johnston. #Synectics history with George Prince and Tim Gallwey. Plus #TomBrady ! strategyinnovationgroup.com/b… About 3 years ago from Synecticsworld's Twitter via Twitter Web App There are challenges related to people working from home. These challenges existed before Covid but have become more profound with greater numbers of people WFH. This recent article from the NYT suggests other concerns that are starting to take shape. lnkd.in/etX9xim About 4 years ago from Synecticsworld's Twitter via Twitter Web App I wanted to share this recent insight from my partner, Connie Williams. The title is Jim Comey's Sweet Lesson in Leadership. Connie finds some interesting connections related to Comey's management style. lnkd.in/ejJeyRR About 4 years ago from Synecticsworld's Twitter via Twitter Web App Joe Gammal recently participated in the Virtual Island Summit. Over 10,000 people participated representing more than 500 islands. The need for collective action to solve difficult issues was a central point of the Summit. See more in this article: mvtimes.com/2020/09/16/oce… About 4 years ago from Synecticsworld's Twitter via Twitter Web App We were sorry to hear of the passing of Sir Ken Robinson. He was a true visionary and his concerns about students and creativity resonated with all of us at Synecticsworld. If you are not familiar with his work, we recommend you start with this Ted Talk. ted.com/talks/sir_ken_… About 4 years ago from Synecticsworld's Twitter via Twitter Web App

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More From Forbes

Here's how to leverage a business plan for expansion decisions.

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For an entrepreneur considering business expansion, creating a solid business plan is essential to making informed decisions and minimizing costly mistakes. A well-crafted plan can help clarify goals, identify potential obstacles and outline the steps needed to achieve success.

A business plan can provide a solid roadmap for your expansion plans, but It's important to do things like conduct thorough research, set realistic goals and regularly review and update the plan first. In doing so, entrepreneurs can identify potential risks and opportunities and make informed decisions that support long-term growth and sustainability.

Below, 16 experts from Forbes Business Council share their best advice for business owners who want to leverage their business plan to guide expansion decisions.

1. Conduct A Test Before Doing A Full-Scale Rollout

Test the plan with a small implementation before the full-scale rollout. Try to identify or develop a sampling that will be a close representation of your actual conditions and environment. Identify and fix issues, and also seek opportunities for improvement. Once these are accomplished, fully implement the improved plan. - Ferris Ayar , Astute Group LLC

2. Create A Clear And Thorough Plan

It is important to keep in mind that a business plan should be comprehensive and include detailed financial projections, market analysis and a clear strategy for success. Additionally, it should also provide insight into the company’s competitive advantage and long-term goals. With this in mind, make sure that the document is well-researched and easy to understand. - Pavel Israelsky , Angora Media

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3. Pinpoint Your Target Market First

An entrepreneur should thoroughly research and analyze their target market when creating a business plan for expansion decisions. This is important to determine the plan’s feasibility, forecast revenue and make informed decisions, in addition to identifying potential challenges, risks and opportunities for differentiation and growth. - Mauricio Rosero , M2 Studios

4. Be Conservative And Mindful Of The Economy

When creating a business plan for expansion, it's important to be conservative in your estimates and projections, especially in light of a potential economic recession. A recession can greatly affect market dynamics, making it harder for a business to perform as well as projected. It's likely that financing will be harder to come by, so a clear plan will be even more necessary. - Anthony Luna , Coastline Equity

5. Determine Which Markets Could Benefit From Your Business

Conducting a market analysis is important because it provides a realistic understanding of the industry and the potential demand for the company's product or service. This information can be used to make decisions about where and how to expand the business. The market analysis should also consider the financial aspects of the expansion, such as costs, projected revenue and potential ROI. - Trey Ferro , Spot Pet Insurance

6. Find Your Niche

For business expansion, you can claim a niche within your existing market and narrow down your audience to a very specific customer. It sounds counterintuitive but it's a great way to optimize your focus to get higher brand loyalty and word-of-mouth growth. - Marilisa Barbieri

7. Have Your Plan Vetted By Verified Experts

In the Information Age, you should have a cohesive board with experts in finance, technology, sales, marketing, strategic partnerships, market research, cultural development, venture capital, recruiting, DEI, agility and innovation. This cohesion is the bedrock of today’s sustainable enterprise. - Ben Sever , eRemede

8. Use Your Plan To Find Areas Worth Investing In

A strong business plan is not only a critical component of success but also a foundation that companies are built, expanded and scaled upon. Writing a business plan involves analyzing your industry, competitive landscape and product market fit. When considering expansion, refer to the portions of your business plan like your SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats) to highlight areas where you can best invest in expansion. - Christian Brown , Glewee

9. Sketch Out Everything

You have to literally simulate (or whatever gets closest to that) everything that you are planning to do and all the potential outcomes and circumstances. There are multiple obstacles and variables that are easy to avoid if you just simulate what is going to happen. Some details can be easy to miss when everything is just in the form of thoughts. Try to act it out. - Jean Paul De Silva Clauwaert , Web Content Development

10. Forecast Short- And Long-Term Performance Goals

By including accurate forecasts of performance for short- and long-term goals, that information can then be used as a baseline for judging the effectiveness of strategic decisions throughout the growth process. To accurately predict an expansion's chances of success or failure, estimates should be based on credible data and industry standards. - Dustin Lemick , BriteCo

11. Use Agile Principles

Having a business plan goes without saying. In today’s fast-changing economy, what is most important is that your plan is based on agile principles to create a start fast, fail fast culture. This allows your people to be innovative through rapid prototyping and have a stronger perception of your product in the market because the days of dropping a new product once every six months are over. - Eric Miquelon , Avanade

12. Apply The Right Formula

If the expansion serves as a test, then the result would turn out as a minimum viable product. If the goal, however, is for the expansion to work and serve as the next logical step toward development, investments need to be made. In a nutshell, if a company makes huge investments for tests only, this could potentially lead to great financial losses. - Ivan Popov , Vipe Studio

13. Ensure Your Plan Includes A Thorough Future Market Analysis

A thorough future market analysis will help identify potential risks and weak sides, as well as opportunities associated with expanding into new markets. This analysis is important because it gives leaders an understanding of the feasibility of the expansion and helps to validate the decision before significant resources are invested. - Andrey Kovalev , BusinessInvitee Consulting Group

14. Start Small And Learn From Mistakes

A professional business plan is invaluable when it comes to considering an expansion. It provides a GPS route to get to a proposed result. It is exciting to have expansion goals, but start small and get your feet wet. When you encounter any issues in acquiring a new facility or company, solve and learn from them. You will become more confident and prove to banks that you can successfully merge companies and expand your business. - Francisco Ramirez , The ACE Group (TAG)

15. Outline Multiple Scenarios

Create multiple scenarios for your expansion plan in terms of timing and scale. With an ever-changing economy, it is important to have options and not be tied to a single outcome. This will also save you time and money in the long run. - Kelley Higney , Bug Bite Thing

16. Don't Spend Too Much Time On Hypotheticals

Business plans usually have too many hypotheticals and are outdated by the time you finish writing them. I'm not suggesting you shouldn't do your research, but a concise strategic plan is far more practical. Define what growth looks like, decide if you're going to build or buy that growth (or do both) and then break this growth down into actionable sprints. Imperfect action beats perfect planning every time. - Simon Bedard , Exit Advisory Group

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The Future of the Business Plan When things get rocky, what will keep you on point and on mission? What can you refer to, ensuring you aren't straying from your original vision? The right business plan can go a long way.

By Pieter Scholtz Apr 11, 2019

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

You're reading Entrepreneur South Africa, an international franchise of Entrepreneur Media.

Business plans are a lot like maps and GPSes. If the organisational journey is proceeding smoothly, you may believe you don't need one. Indeed, there's a school of thought — backed by certain research — that says starting out with a formal plan is no predictor of success and it's better to get out there and test your concept in a real-world environment.

These naysayers argue that most business plans are theoretical, unrealistic and go out the window the first time the entrepreneur encounters an unforeseen hurdle.

Refer to the original vision

But the pro-business plan lobby argues that, when market conditions unexpectedly change and you're thrown into disarray, it's important to refer to the original vision and belief system that you started out with. These will help to keep you grounded and avoid going off at tangents every time you hit an obstacle.

A plan also helps to prioritise your daily activities. Without it, everything becomes urgent and the resulting chaos will destroy your work/life balance and leave you feeling overwhelmed. If you are more than a one-person operation, a business plan enables company teams to align their activities to the overall vision and to work congruently to achieve the same goals.

William B. Gartner, an entrepreneurship professor at Clemson University in the US, believes business plans are essential.

After analysing data from a survey of more than 800 people starting businesses, he found that writing a plan greatly increased the chances of actually going into business.

"You're two-and-a-half times more likely to get into business," he observes. "That's powerful." Alyssa Gregory, an entrepreneur and writer for the likes of Forbes and the New York Times, says the process of putting together a business plan can help with new ideas, different approaches and fresh perspectives.

"An effective business plan is a flexible, growing and dynamic tool that can help you think creatively and come up with new solutions for some of your toughest business challenges," she says.

Keep the plan simple

However, the thinking around the required depth and complexity of a business plan has changed. A decade or two ago, management gurus advocated elaborate 40-page plans with detailed sections covering objectives, mission, organisational structure, target market, customer behaviour, competitive advantage, marketing strategy, sales forecasts and financial projections.

These days, unless you're seeking outside investors or looking for a bank loan that requires a detailed risk analysis, the move is towards shorter and simpler documents of no more than a page.

The reasons for this change are many. A lengthy document is likely to be unread — particularly by younger-generation employees with short attention spans. Even if it is read, it's unlikely to be remembered in detail because of its complexity.

So, opt for a one-page business plan that's easily digestible and lists only the important things like mission, vision, etc. Cut the fluff and keep the essence. If you've spent time preparing a longer plan, that's okay. Turn the key elements that will keep you focused on your goals and the bigger picture into short bullet points that will become your go-to business plan for regular use.

What should be in your one-pager? South Africa-based digital marketing and content strategist, Casandra Visser, suggests:

• Vision - What are you building
• Mission Statement - What you do, what your product/service is and who your customers are
• Objectives - Your business goals for the next week, month or year
• Strategies - How you plan to achieve your objectives
• Action Plan - Steps you will take to action your strategies, including dates/deadlines.

Finally, remember that your plan is a living, breathing document that needs to be meaningful in a constantly changing business environment. So, break up your annual plan into quarterly plans that take into account micro and macro changes in your specific operating environment. Keep it relevant, keep it simple — and your business plan will be an invaluable asset in navigating your business journey.

Master Licensee

Pieter Scholtz is the Master Licensee for ActionCOACH South Africa . ActionCOACH is the world’s largest executive and business coaching company with operations in 41 countries. It is also on the list of the top 100 franchises globally. As a highly successful Business and Executive coach, Pieter is a master of teaching business owners how to turn their businesses around and accelerate their growth. Email him at [email protected] or phone 082 8813729.

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• InterviewPenguin.com – Your best job interview coach since 2011

Interview questions answered: What are your future plans?

‘If you want to make God laugh, tell him about your plans’. Woody Allen was right, as the history has proven countless times. We can plan and dream and hope, yet we never have things completely under our control . A pandemic starts, or we get sick, or something positive happens–such as falling in love with a stranger, and suddenly we have to change our plans, or want to change them.

But what does it mean for your job interview? Should you philosophize about uncertainty of life , or should you come up with a precise and concrete answer , explaining what you want do in six month, three years, and ten years from now? You can actually succeed with both approaches to the question , as long as you explain your reasoning. As a rule of a thumb, however, you should try to connect your future plans with their company. This can mean internal promotion , but also having the same job for a foreseeable future, when there are no obvious career growth opportunities.

Let’s have a look at 7 sample answers to this interesting interview question. I tried to include in my selection answers for a variety of situations and jobs, including jobs nobody wants to have for longer than six months, as well as a couple of unconventional answers (philosophizing about vanity of planning in the uncertain world we live in), and also one answer that focuses primarily on goals and plans outside of work, and one answer for students (applying for a place in a study program instead of for a job). Go through them, think for a few seconds about each one, and pick one that resonates with you, and with the message you try to convey to the hiring managers.

7 sample answers to “What are your future plans?” interview question

• To be honest, I do not have any big plans . I would enjoy working as a receptionist in a nice hotel with a great management, just like this one. My future plans are having a job I enjoy doing , finding good life-work balance, foster good relationships both at work and in my personal life, and simply enjoy every day as it comes and goes. Of course, I plan to continue working on my language skills , because I want to become better in my work. But when it comes to the job, I do not dream of changing my career, or of anything similar.
• My future plans can be summed up in one sentence: to make a great career in this international corporation . Of course, I have some positions on my mind. A finance manager, later perhaps an FP&A director. As you can see I dare do dream big . At the same time, however, I realize I have to start here as an entry level financial analyst , learn the ins and outs of the job, prove my skills and dedication to work, and just then I can think of promotion and better jobs.
• My future plans are yet to be decided . I am still young, and trying to find my calling . It is one of the reasons why I apply for a job with your company –because it is very big, you have many departments, offices overseas, and I feel that options are almost endless here, of course as long as you try hard and do not mind sacrificing something for your job . What exactly I will do, however, and where I will end up living, I cannot tell now. But I am excited about the future , and without a doubt I will come up with some tangible plans down the road.
• Speaking honestly, I prefer to live in a present moment . Plans? God, I had many. You would not believe if I told you. But sometimes I wasn’t ready to pursue them , other times destiny stepped into my way . I learned the hard way that regardless of how hard we try, we never have things fully under our control. And it doesn’t matter whether we talk about personal life, or professional career. Future plans? They only bring me anxiety . Hence for the last few years I prefer living in the moment, focusing on the task at hand, and going with the flow . At the moment I try to get a job with your retail store . With my year of birth, however, no interview is easy anymore. I did what I could to prepare for this meeting. If I get the job, I will do my best every day, and let’s see what’s next. Living in the present is liberating .
• I plan to start a family in five years time . It is my biggest dream as a woman–to have kids, and to be a good mother. Of course, we never know what the future will bring , and you need two people for starting a family. But this is my plan for the future, and I will try my best to pursue it. Speaking about my professional career , I’d be happy to work as a secretary until then, and then return back after maternity leave… Is there anything else you’d like to know about my future goals and plans?
• I do not have any future plans . Had some in the past, things haven’t worked out, and I only ended up disappointed. In my opinion, when we fixate on something in the future –some object of our desire, be it another person, a job, or a nice thing we want to buy, such as a new house, our job and daily life becomes just a means to an end . We go to work and around our daily business just to achieve X and Y in the future. And that’s a recipe to depression and unhappiness. Why should we rob ourselves of the most precious thing we have–the present moment? I also learned that when we take care of the present, the future will take care of itself . What I try to convey here is that if I focus 100% on the task at hand, and do it well, and then repeat it again and again, there’s no doubt I will progress in my career . And that’s exactly what I try to do, and my way of living.
• My future plan is to become a great nurse . It is something I have been dreaming of for years. Now I am just applying for a place at a nursing school, and I know I have a long road ahead of me. But I see the meaningful purpose in this job , know what I want to achieve in life, and I hope it will drive me forward in my studies, and help me overcome the challenges I will undoubtedly face while trying to earn my degree.

Show some excitement for the future, or for the present

Regardless of whether you opt for conventional approach, or philosophize about the vanity of planing in the 21st century, they should hear some excitement in your voice . And it doesn’t matter what job you are applying for, and how far it is from your “dream career”.

Of course, the main reason why we go to work is the need to earn money to live . That’s how it works in life, and it likely won’t be any otherwise in the future. If you want to avoid sleeping on the street , you have to create some value for others (in your job, or in your business)–unless you were born in a golden cage, but you probably wouldn’t be reading this article in such a case…

The point I try to convey here is that employers do not want to hire pessimistic and bitter employees , who do not see anything positive about their future. Show some excitement for what’s ahead , your job with them, good things awaiting you in your life outside of work, and so on.

Make sure to have realistic future plans

Anything is possible and we can dream big, but you should try to keep it realistic in your interviews . For sure you can become a CEO of Tesla or General Electric one day. But it perhaps isn’t the best idea talking about such plans while you apply for an entry level role in these companies, or for a kitchen helper job at McDonald’s. It is just too farfetched.

Think about a position you can realistically have in a year, three years, five years, ideally within their organization, and focus on it while narrating your future plans. And if you are not sure, you can always opt for answer no. 4 or no. 6 on my list, focusing on present, and explaining why you prefer to do so .

Ready to answer this question? I hope so! Do not forget to check also sample answers to other tricky interview questions:

• How do you handle success?
• What is your greatest fear?
• Why should we hire you, and not one of the other applicants for the job?
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Trump’s future business plans may be hiding in plain sight

The Trump Organization has registered and renewed hundreds of domain names – from MarALagoVegas.com to TrumpTowerMoscow.com.

By Edward-Isaac Dovere , Madeline Conway and Tyler Fisher | 06/28/17 05:00 AM EDT

T hree weeks before Donald Trump officially accepted the Republican nomination last year, the Trump Organization renewed licenses on hundreds of new domain names for business ventures at home and around the world—including CelebrityApprenticePoker.com , TrumpForeclosureInvesting.com and TrumpTowerMoscow.com .

The re-registration of domain names continued after Trump’s inauguration, with hundreds of sites kept for potential new businesses in Ireland, the United Arab Emirates, China, India and Indonesia once he was already in the Oval Office. Three weeks before Trump hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping at his Mar-a-Lago club in South Florida, the Trump Organization renewed its licenses for MarALagoClubAsia.com and theMarALagoClub.Asia.

There’s also TrumpOnIce.com and TrumpDrone.com.

Publicly available internet directory records analyzed by POLITICO from the domain registration database website WhoIs.com show thousands of sites registered by the Trump Organization’s general counsel, with many for existing Trump businesses, including some that have since been shuttered, but many that instead direct to holding pages.

They appear to provide a road map for ventures the president’s company has been considering, though some are in places that are now trouble spots for his presidency: TrumpRussia.com and TrumpUkraine.com were both renewed on June 29, 2016, while DonaldJTrumpSignatureCollectionVenezuela.com, TrumpApparelVenezuela.com, TrumpClothingVenezuela.com, TrumpHomeBathVenezuela.com, TrumpBeddingVenezuela.com and TrumpHomeAccessoriesVenezuela.com were updated on Oct. 14, 2016.

Trump has always been ambitious to expand, and his interest in building a Trump Tower in Moscow dates back at least as far as a visit to the Russian capital in 1996, during which he said he’d like to build a replica of his signature Fifth Avenue skyscraper there. While registration for TrumpTowerMoscow.com was renewed as recently as June 29, 2016, there do not appear to be any short-term plans to move forward on such a project, especially given that Trump is facing multiple investigations into whether his campaign colluded with the Kremlin ahead of the election. Currently, TrumpTowerMoscow.com, like most of the domains registered by the Trump Organization that aren’t active businesses, goes to a standard GoDaddy landing page.

Eric Goldman, a professor at the Santa Clara Law School and director of its High Tech Law Institute who’s written about corporate use of domain registration, said the Trump Organization’s activity could represent “very long-range planning or preemptive registration.”

Goldman said most companies tend to use holding companies or individuals for this kind of activity, which would be harder to track. Given the relatively minimal costs of buying hundreds of thousands of domain names at once, many companies also use automated systems which buy up thousands of variations on names, as well as all of them as .com, .info, .net and more.

The Trump Organization does not appear to have done either: a smaller, directed set of names can be traced back directly to its general counsel.

“It could be because the company’s thinking about moving in a particular direction and it wants to make sure it had had the domain name space to expand,” Goldman said, “or it can be to preempt a squatter, to avoid something else taking the domain name.”

Some of the registration renewals are perplexing. The president’s company renewed 79 site name variations of Trump University first registered from 2007 to 2009, from TrumpUHartford.com, TrumpUniversityTN.com to TrumpUniversityWealthBuilding.com, though Trump University had officially been shuttered in 2010 and was by last summer deep in the lawsuit that ultimately led to the president’s decision to settle for $25 million after being elected.

From TrumpExam to TrumpUNY

Trump’s company also renewed 59 other site names to potentially extend the Mar-a-Lago brand beyond Palm Beach, most first registered in 2012, from Chicago to Las Vegas to Panama and Toronto.

Since Trump’s election, membership fees have doubled to $200,000 annually at the original Mar-a-Lago in Florida, where the president flew to on Air Force One nearly every weekend during the early months of his presidency, often popping in to functions held there.

According to his personal financial disclosure filed this month, since he became president, Trump’s profits have spiked by millions of dollars at Mar-a-Lago and the Bedminster, N.J., golf course where he is spending most of his weekends in recent months.

Other sites renewed by the Trump Organization appear to reflect plans to leverage the personality that Trump marketed into a shocking self-propelled White House run, including LiveLikeATrump.com, LiveTheTrumpLife.com and ThinkLikeATrump.com, or for those looking for more permanence, TrumpInk.com and TrumpTats.com. Alternatively, people might have been able sign up for DownloadTheDonald.com, a site registered despite the president’s dislike of that New York tabloid-born nickname.

Then there are site names which, though registered in the same way as the others, may be defensive domain squatting to keep others from starting troublemaking websites, like TrumpNetworkPonziScheme.com, DonaldTrumpPyramidScheme.com, TrumpIsFired.com and TrumpVodkaSucks.com–the last registered all the way back in December 2005.

Old political sites like TrumpIsHired2012.com (registered Jan. 24, 2011) and DonaldTrump2012.com (registered Sept. 15, 2010) have been annually renewed, while new ones have popped up, including Trump2016.com (registered Sept. 2, 2014) and MakeAmericaGreatAgain.us (registered March 26, 2015)—both months before he launched his campaign. There are many in the names of Trump’s children and grandchildren as well.

But a large chunk of the domain names registered by the Trump Organization over roughly the last 5 1/2 years are more than 900 that point the way to potential foreign ventures. Many relate to known projects, like his golf course in Scotland and his apartment development in Mumbai.

From TrumpRussia to TrumpBelize

There are sites for 32 different Trump Tower ventures around the world, some of them built, and some of them not previously public, like TrumpTowerRome.com, TrumpTowerLondon.com and TrumpTowerBangkok.com, with apparent ambition for further expansion in both China and India.

Trump said during the transition that he was voluntarily turning over all management of his company to his two older sons, and they have said that they would not start any new overseas ventures while he is in the White House—but no proof has been provided that either is happening.

Trump also pledged during the transition that he would donate all profits to his businesses from foreigners to the Treasury Department. He never provided a structure for that, and earlier this month, his Justice Department argued in court that he can accept money from foreign governments.

Without information about what business ventures the privately held Trump Organization is continuing to pursue or the tax returns that the president is refusing to release, there’s no way to know to what extent his company is continuing to pursue projects. His financial disclosure released earlier this month indicated that he had resigned from official leadership of his corporations.

Bruce Boyden, an associate law professor at Marquette University who teaches copyright and internet law, said the Trump Organization reserving a domain name related to a possible business venture is not itself a signal that the company is actually pursuing it.

“Even if companies don’t have firm plans or even vague plans” to start a particular project, Boyden said, “they might just want to keep their options open.”

Most of the websites came up for renewal at the end of June 2016, when Trump had secured the Republican nomination but was still considered a long shot to win—a sentiment shared by the candidate himself and most of the people working on his campaign.

White House press secretary Sean Spicer did not respond to an email with questions about the domain registrations, if the president keeps his decisions on policy areas like Russia independent from interest in potential future projects like TrumpTowerMoscow.com, or if he has separated from decisions about pursuing them. Representatives from the Trump Organization did not respond to separate questions about why all the domain names were re-registered after Trump secured the nomination, if the company is pursuing these projects, or whether the domains’ registrations will be renewed again now that Trump is in the White House.

With many of the sites up for renewal at the end of June, it could be telling to see which domains the company chooses to refresh while Trump is in the Oval Office and combating criticism about conflicts of interest. Already since the inauguration, the Trump Organization decided not to renew about 100 sites it had registered, including IvankaTrumpWindows.info, IvankaPillows.org, EricTrumpFoundation.com and TrumpRent.com.

But as of now, the rest remain Trump Organization property, from TrumpBloodyMary.com and TrumpSparklingWine.com to TrumpHomeBeddingBolivia.com.

Copy edited by Sushant Sagar . Additional design and development by Lily Mihalik .

Kremlin says any Trump peace plan for Ukraine would have to reflect reality on the ground

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Exclusive: US has sent Israel thousands of 2,000-pound bombs since Oct. 7

The totals suggest there has been no significant drop-off in U.S. military support for its ally, despite international calls to limit weapons supplies and a recent administration decision to pause a shipment of powerful bombs.

Boots chief James quits after owner's £5bn sale plan stalls

Sebastian James, who has run the Nottingham-based retail giant since 2018, will step down in November amid continuing doubt about its future ownership, Sky News learns.

City editor @MarkKleinmanSky

Saturday 29 June 2024 13:48, UK

The chief executive of Boots, Britain's biggest high street pharmacy chain, is quitting after its owner's plans for a £5bn sale or stock market listing stalled.

Sky News has learnt that Sebastian James, who has run Boots since 2018, will leave the company in November.

City sources said this weekend that he had accepted a new role in the healthcare industry.

Money blog: How to split housework fairly

His exit comes soon after it emerged that New York-listed Walgreens Boots Alliance (WBA), the British retailer's owner, had decided for the second time in two years against pursuing a sale or stock market flotation of the chain.

An announcement about Mr James's departure is expected in the coming days.

WBA is not yet thought to have lined up a successor.

Mr James, who previously ran the electricals retailer Dixons (now named Currys), recently endorsed Sir Keir Starmer - a notable move because of his long friendship with Lord Cameron , the foreign secretary.

His departure from Boots will come during the Nottingham-based company's 175th year.

Boots employs about 52,000 people and trades from roughly 1,900 stores.

Its recent trading performance has been strong, with WBA this week saying that like-for-like sales at Boots during the quarter to the end of May rose by 6% and 5.8% across its retail and pharmacy operations respectively.

An insider said Mr James had overseen a successful turnaround, with market share having grown for 13 successive quarters.

Read more on Sky News: Energy supplier OVO to explore options Four major banks hit by glitches Ex-Fujitsu engineer denies 'protecting the monster'

It has been a rare bright spot for WBA, which has had a torrid time and has seen its shares slump.

A WBA spokesperson said this week: "As Walgreens Boots Alliance continues a strategic review of the Company's assets, we took a critical look at Boots.

"While we believe there is significant interest in this business at the right time, Boots' growth, strategic strength and cashflow remain key contributors to Walgreens Boots Alliance.

"We are committed to continuing to invest in Boots UK and to find innovative ways for this business to fulfill its potential."

Keep up with all the latest news from the UK and around the world by following Sky News

During a previous auction in 2022, only one bidder - a consortium of Apollo Global Management and Reliance Industries - tabled a formal offer worth about £5.5bn.

However, growing concerns about the global economy had triggered severe doubts among large banks which help finance leveraged buyouts, with Boots among the biggest such deals in Europe.

Among the other challenges facing prospective acquirers at the time was finding an adequate solution for Boots' £8bn pension scheme - one of the largest private retirement funds in the UK.

This issue has now been resolved through an insurance deal struck with Legal & General.

Like many retailers, Boots had a turbulent pandemic, announcing 4,000 job cuts in 2020 as a consequence of a restructuring of its Nottingham head office and store management teams.

Shortly before the COVID pandemic, Boots earmarked about 200 of its UK stores for closure, a reflection of changing shopping habits.

Boots' heritage dates back to John Boot opening a herbal remedies store in Nottingham in 1849.

It opened its 1000th UK store in 1933.

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In 2006, Boots merged with Alliance Unichem, a drug wholesaler, with the buyout firm KKR acquiring the combined group in an £11bn deal the following year.

In 2012, Walgreens acquired a 45% stake in Alliance Boots, completing its buyout of the business two years later.

Boots declined to comment on Mr James's exit on Saturday.

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What Happens to Biden’s Student Loan Repayment Plan Now?

More than eight million borrowers are enrolled in the income-driven plan known as SAVE. The Education Department is assessing the rulings.

By Tara Siegel Bernard

President Biden’s new student loan repayment plan was hobbled on Monday after two federal judges in Kansas and Missouri issued separate rulings that temporarily blocked some of the plan’s benefits, leaving questions about its fate.

The preliminary injunctions, which suspend parts of the program known as SAVE, leave millions of borrowers in limbo until lawsuits filed by two groups of Republican-led states challenging the legality of the plan are decided.

That means the Biden administration cannot reduce borrowers’ monthly bills by as much as half starting July 1, as had been scheduled, and it must pause debt forgiveness to SAVE enrollees. The administration has canceled $5.5 billion in debt for more than 414,000 borrowers through the plan, which opened in August.

If you’re among the eight million borrowers making payments through SAVE — the Saving on a Valuable Education plan — you probably have many questions. Here’s what we know so far, though the Education Department has yet to release its official guidance.

Let’s back up for a minute. What does SAVE do?

Like the income-driven repayment plans that came before it, the SAVE program ties borrowers’ monthly payments to their income and household size. After payments are made for a certain period of years, generally 20 or 25, any remaining debt is canceled.

But the SAVE plan — which replaced the Revised Pay as You Earn program, or REPAYE — is more generous than its predecessor plans in several ways.

Ask us your questions about the SAVE student loan repayment plan.

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