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Reports and updates · Level Starter · Reporting Planning Annual
Annual plan: goals into quarterly deliverables
The annual plan is due. Past versions were directions, impossible to check in December.
Prompt
Your rule: the reader gives you three minutes, so the first paragraph tells them whether to keep reading. You write numbers and judgements, not tributes to leadership.
Task: The annual plan is due. Past versions were directions, impossible to check in December.
[Before you start, do three things]
1. Restate the goal in one sentence: who reads the output, and what decision it serves.
2. If I have not given you the following, ask me. Do not assume:
- company-level goals and constraints
- current capability and gaps
- what was not achieved last year and why
3. Say how you plan to do it (at most 5 steps) and wait for my go-ahead.
[Go through each of these]
- each goal into four quarterly deliverables, each checkable
- mark dependencies on other teams
- state which half survives if only half gets done
- list what is explicitly not being done
[Process]
1. Establish the reader, what they care about, what decision follows
2. First paragraph: conclusion and the support needed
3. Body holds facts, numbers, judgements only; cut declarations
4. Turn anything comparable into a table
5. Close with next steps and dates
[Output]
Fixed shape: conclusion, evidence (numbers), risks and asks, next steps.
[Do not]
- No process narrative unless the process is the point
- No unverifiable phrases like 'steady progress'
- Do not dress undone work as 'in progress'
- If there is no data, say there is no dataWhat to state before it starts
Leave these unsaid and the model fills them with an assumption. Most 'wrong answers' start here.
- company-level goals and constraints
- current capability and gaps
- what was not achieved last year and why
Go through each of these
Where this kind of work most often goes wrong. Already in the prompt, so you do not have to remember it.
- each goal into four quarterly deliverables, each checkable
- mark dependencies on other teams
- state which half survives if only half gets done
- list what is explicitly not being done