Thinking in Three Time Frames

The Short Version: 

It is hard, and vital, to stay connected in the heat of the churn. Explicit shared language about time frames is one of the simplest and most effective ways to stay connected when things are moving fast.

These are the three I cannot live without:

1. A Week: What we’re doing in the next seven to 14 days to keep the wheels on the cart. 

2. A Quarter: What we’re doing in the next 1-3 months to make meaningful progress on the core systems we use to learn, sell, fulfill, and fund our work.  

3. A Year+: The big picture. What we’re working towards, why we’re doing it in the first place. 

Why it matters

Explicitly grounding requests in shared language of time frames enables your team to connect - quickly. 

Connected to the reason we’re doing all of this.

Connected to the reality of what is happening now, whether we like it or not.

Connected to each other. To agree or disagree out loud. To contribute actionable insight.

Connection creates safety and preserves your most precious resource: your team’s energy.

Want more?

Read on….

IPC, Gift of Andrew Savulich, 1994

The Details:

If you have ever participated in a conversation about priorities and felt your body leak energy or flood with exhaustion and rising rage - you may have experienced a disconnect in time frames - what you believe needs to happen, by when. 

How do we know when this is happening? 

Listen. 

The internal dialogue isn’t usually pretty, or kind. It can sound something like this:

“Oh for shit’s sake - we’re talking about opening four new markets next quarter, but the teams are buried NOW. They’ve been working 14 hour days and can’t keep up, let alone recruit and train new hires. Our best managers will quit this quarter if we don’t do right by them.”  

“Why is he drilling into last week’s sales conversion again, when we don’t have a decision on who our customer is? When are we going to talk about what we are really building here?”

These frustrations are not harmful, unless we ignore them. 

Here’s a deeper introduction to each time frame, the promise and risk with each, and how your team can use them to connect and generate powerful results. 

A Week: Keep the wheels on the cart

All startups and scaling teams work in increments of ‘the next seven days’ to hold things together, but no one wants to live like this full time.

Photo: the epitome of urgent and connected effort emergency C-section, captured by Natalie Broders

What it feels like:

• In its best application, focus on the next week can create relief and feel deeply satisfying because we have clear goals and see rapid progress on an urgent and important issue.

• If we spend too much energy here, it can feel reactive, exhausting a survival mode that precedes discouragement and burnout. 

A week works best for:  

Rapid iteration, deep learning, or solving a specific highest priority problem with a small team. Example projects

• Customer discovery 

• Design sprints 

• Crisis response 

To optimize life in the 1-2 weeks time frame: 

• Name it. Clearly state that this is temporary. Name exactly what we’re trying to solve or learn, so we know when we’re done. 

• Assign a SWAT team, and plan for recovery. Designers work in sprints. Sales and fulfillment teams have daily stand-ups, visual displays of this week’s numbers on the board. Crisis response teams focus almost exclusively on the crisis at hand. Plan breaks and consider proactively trading out team members as conditions change. 

• Meet, meet, meet, and report out. If more than 30% of any team’s time is focused on things happening in the next 1-2 weeks, that team needs to meet daily, sometimes more than once a day to align on what’s been learned, how conditions have changed, and to check progress. A weekly written report-out and check-ins with execs or outside advisors can help the team come up for air and provide visibility and support into what can otherwise start to feel like a black hole. When you’re bored in the meetings, it’s time to exit this stage. 

Life in this time frame is exhilarating, and extremely expensive. All decisions based on new information in this time frame require a cognitive load equivalent to managing a new infant, a wildfire, or a global pandemic.

Use it sparingly!    

A Quarter: Meaningful progress on core systems

This time frame is the bread and butter of any operating business. As leadership teams grow, team members can revel in creative autonomy, and deliver meaningful results. 

Photo: it is astonishing what a team with tools, structure and autonomy can create in a quarter. Sound Foundations Hope Factory

What it feels like:

• In its best application, focusing a quarter at a time can create a powerful sense of ownership, progress and pride-in-team.

• If we spend too much energy here without the juice that comes from attuning to the team's immediate needs and our shared long term vision, it can feel mechanical, disconnected and dry, or oblivious. 

A quarter works best for:

building core infrastructure to support scale and complexity. Example projects:

• Software selection, development, and deployment 

• Hiring 

• Internal process improvement 

• New reporting dashboards and visibility  

• Fundraising 

• Market expansion 

To optimize energy spent in the 1-3 months time frame: 

• Frame quarterly projects in terms of long term mission - Directly link all resource allocation decisions and project evaluations to the long term goals. Genuine focus on values and customer stories grounds what you’re building in WHY you’re building it.  

• Connect quarterly projects to the teams they’ll serve - Plan for quarterly projects to drive measurable improvements you’ll see on a weekly, or daily basis once implemented. You want the ‘quarterly’ team in direct, near-constant relationship with the sales or fulfillment team they’re intended to serve - so you can all feel and see the improvements in speed, cost and quality as they drop. 

• Celebrate and reward - showcase work and contributions for operational improvements. Sales and customer-facing teams often take the spotlight. Share it generously.  

1-3 years: The Big Picture 

This time frame is the stomping ground of visionaries.

It is ignition.

Fuel for creatives and anyone who dreams of building something better than what exists today.

Photo context: Possibility worth fighting for, Maggie Eileen, for Kiss the Ground

What it feels like:

• Focus on the next 1-3 years can feel expansive and motivating. In its best application, focus on the big picture can create deep connection and shared purpose, a resilient ‘why’ to carry teams through the most challenging conditions.

• If we spend too much energy here, it can feel indulgent, wasteful and demoralizing, a dream without feet on the ground. 

The 1-3 years frame works best as:

The foundation for all resource allocation and external communication, make it an integral part of:

• Resource allocation decisions - time and capital 

• Evaluation for major projects and investments - did our investment generate the intended impact? 

• Communication - recruiting, branding, marketing, and storytelling   

To optimize energy spent in the 1-3 years time frame:

• Distill. Work this until you can state answers to the following questions in one or two sentences. What is our purpose? Who is our target customer? What is the problem we are trying to solve? How do we define success this year? What are our biggest risks? 

• Check for understanding. If your team cannot consistently answer the questions above in the elevator, you are not getting the most out of them. If your investors do not answer the same way your leadership team does, you are putting your team at risk.  

• Celebrate and reward. Anchor employee awards, customer satisfaction feedback, team competitions, compensation and celebration to the big picture. This brings the concepts to life and can help a growing team feel deeply supported by work others are doing. 

• Evaluate and update. Ideas change as we learn. Make sure your whole team knows when your vision shifts. 

This time frame is the lifeblood of your team.

Defining success in the next 1-3 years is the full responsibility of the founders or CEO.  

Other executives, advisors, and any member of the team will contribute to the vision, clarify what is achievable by when, and what kinds of resources will be required. And, it is the lead executive’s job to make final decisions and to empower the broader team to make decisions consistent with the big picture. Elsbeth Johnson describes what it looks like with precision in her article ‘Lazy executives and heroic managers’, which can also give you a fly-on-the-wall view of the real cost of not doing so.

If you are the CEO, clarify, communicate, and check for understanding. If you are not the CEO, ask gently until you get the answer your team needs. 

Go Deeper

• SPRINT, How smart teams start big projects - by Jake Knapp, Google Ventures

• Lazy Leaders and Heroic Managers - by Elizabeth Johnson for Strategy + Business

• The Art of Possibility - by Rosamind Stone Zander and Benjamin Zander

This work is simple, but not easy, and no one does it alone, including me! I would LOVE to hear from you - what resonates, how has this shown up in your work, and what have you tried that’s helped?

As always, endlessly cheering you on. Let’s go!