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CREATE A VIEW INTO YOUR FUTURE.

The 64-Chart is a strategic planning tool that helps set the path toward achieving your goal. The chart has your long-term goal in the center, surrounded by the eight key focus areas, with up to eight initiatives or milestones in each focus area.

This tool helps keep your priorities and daily tasks aligned with your long-term goals. A common pitfall, that haunts even the largest companies, is wasting resources on the wrong activities. In the case of Etsy, when CEO Josh Silverman was turning the company around, he cut 400 of 800 business development projects. This helped the company focus on the projects that mattered most.

One of the most difficult barriers to overcome as you scale is being able to provide clear communication about what priorities matter most each quarter. If you are to leap your business forward in any significant way, without getting distracted by the day-to-day, firefighting and shiny objects, everyone must know what matters most and what is expected, by when and by who.

With your 64-Chart you can label the lead for each initiative on the board with a deadline so it is very clear for all to see. Make sure the lead accepts the initiative and proposed timing as something they also believe is reasonable and they are in fact the right person to lead it.

You can have one 64-Chart in the company, or add sub-charts for each department or team to focus on breaking out their own priorities, but ensure they compliment or feed into one another.

What to do:

❶ Use the template. Write your long-term goal in the heart of the chart.This could anything that sums up your visions, such as a target revenue, number of offices worldwide, or taking over the #1 spot in your industry.
❷ Make a list of the eight most important areas of the business that need to be done well and continually improve. If you think of more than eight, see if you can merge any together into a common grouping, or prioritise the top eight. Your areas could be tied to target metrics, focus on each department, or highlight key priorities such as customer satisfaction, product rating, or employee engagement.
❸ For each of the eight areas, brainstorm specific tasks you can do, milestones to reach, or targets to hit as future standards that will support the long-term goal in the middle. Make sure to set a deadline for each one. Assign each area to a different person or team to speed up the activity. Put the 8 ideas with deadlines around each key area.
❹ Review as a group to make sure all ideas were considered, the top priorities are included, and everything is measurable with a target deadline.
❺ Put the items in chronological order clockwise, and colour code by quarter any coming up within the next four quarters.
❻ Identify people on the team to be the leader for each task, for at least the current quarter.
❼ Individuals should add tasks to their own to-do list, project board, or other system they rely on to keep priorities top of mind and become self-reliant to others.