1. The Problem
You spent 3 weeks on annual planning. The deck has 47 slides. Nobody knows what to do Monday morning.
Walk into any leadership offsite in Q4. Whiteboard sessions about 'where we want to be in 3 years.' Breakout groups debating whether to 'increase market share' or 'drive customer success.' Someone suggests both. By hour six you've got a 47-slide deck with phrases like 'operational excellence' and 'digital transformation.' Everyone nods. You present it to the team. They smile, say 'great vision,' then ask what they're supposed to do differently. You don't have an answer because the plan is all vision, zero execution. Q1 looks exactly like Q4. The deck gathers dust in a shared drive nobody opens.
3 weeks
Planning time per year
Leadership retreats, consultant workshops, endless slide decks. Three weeks of meetings that produce vague goals like 'grow revenue 20%' with no roadmap for how.
60% of goals
Never get measured
You set 15 strategic priorities. By March you're tracking 3 of them. The rest? Forgotten. No metrics, no owners, no accountability. Just aspirational bullet points.
Zero alignment
Between teams
Sales thinks the priority is new logos. Product thinks it's retention. Engineering is building features nobody asked for. Everyone's busy, nothing connects to the plan.
"We spent two weeks building a strategic plan. Beautiful slides. Inspiring mission. Then someone asked 'what's our Q1 target for product-qualified leads?' and we realized we had no idea. The plan was all philosophy, zero math."
— VP Strategy, Series B SaaS company
2. The 12 Building-Block Prompts
Example: 01-04: Vision Foundation
You're a strategic planning consultant helping a CEO articulate their 3-year vision. Ask me 4 questions, one at a time, to build a clear strategic foundation: 1. Where is the company today? (revenue, team size, market position, key challenges) 2. Where do you want to be in 3 years? (specific revenue target, market share, team size, product maturity) 3. What's the one thing that must be true for that vision to happen? (the critical success factor) 4. What would make you consider this transformation a failure? (the risk you're most afraid of) After I answer all 4, synthesize my responses into a 3-paragraph strategic vision statement: - Paragraph 1: Current state and the gap we're closing - Paragraph 2: The 3-year destination with specific metrics - Paragraph 3: The critical success factor and the risk we're managing Use clear, direct language. No buzzwords. Make it something I can read to my team and they'll understand exactly what we're building toward. Start by asking me question 1.
✅ Generated Output:
✅ Intro Paragraph:
[After answering all 4 questions, you get:] **Strategic Vision 2025-2028** We're a $5M ARR B2B SaaS company with 22 employees serving 150 customers in the project management space. Our churn is 18% annually because our product lacks the depth that enterprise customers need, and we're losing deals to competitors who can show ROI in 90 days. We're growing 40% year-over-year but hitting a ceiling because we can't scale support and onboarding fast enough. In 3 years, we'll be a $25M ARR company with 75 employees serving 800 customers, including 50 enterprise accounts (>$100K ACV). Our churn will be below 8% because we've rebuilt our onboarding to show ROI in 30 days and added the workflow automation features that enterprise teams demand. We'll have shifted from founder-led sales to a repeatable sales motion with 8 AEs closing $200K each annually. The one thing that must be true: we must retain 90%+ of our enterprise customers in year 1, because if we can't prove value to big accounts, we'll never build the case studies and references needed to close the next 50. The failure scenario we're managing: burning through runway trying to be everything to everyone, building features that don't move retention, and running out of cash before we reach $15M ARR and can raise our Series A.
✅ Meta Description:
Why this works: Most vision statements are corporate poetry ('be the leading provider of innovative solutions'). This gives you a document you can test every decision against. Should we build this feature? Does it help us retain enterprise customers in year 1? No? Then it's not strategic. // Try it now: Copy this prompt. Answer the 4 questions honestly (not aspirationally). You'll get a vision statement that's actually useful—specific enough to guide decisions, clear enough that your team knows what matters. This becomes your North Star for the next 12 prompts.
3. Quick Win: Test in 10 Minutes
Run prompts 1-4 right now. Get your vision statement before lunch.
You don't need a consultant. You need 10 minutes and honest answers.
Stop reading. Open ChatGPT or Claude. Copy prompt 1-4 from the tab above. Answer the 4 questions. Be specific—real numbers, real fears, real targets. Don't write what sounds good in a board deck. Write what's actually true. The AI will synthesize your answers into a vision statement you can read to your team Monday morning. If they understand it, you nailed it. If they ask 'what does that mean?', run the prompt again with clearer answers.
Copy Prompt 1-4
Open the 'Vision Foundation' tab above. Copy the entire prompt. Paste into ChatGPT-4 or Claude 3.5 Sonnet.
Answer Honestly
The AI asks 4 questions. Answer with real numbers, not aspirational ones. Where are you TODAY? Where do you want to be in 3 YEARS? What's the ONE thing that must be true? What's the failure you're afraid of?
Get Your Vision
AI synthesizes your answers into 3 paragraphs: current state, 3-year destination, critical success factor. Read it out loud. Does it sound like something you'd actually say to your team? If not, tell the AI what to change.
Share With One Person
Send your vision to your co-founder, your head of product, or your most honest employee. Ask: 'Does this make sense? Do you understand what we're building toward?' Their reaction tells you if it's clear enough.
Old Way
3 weeks → vague deck
- Leadership offsite with consultants
- 47 slides of buzzwords and frameworks
- Team reads it once, never opens again
- Nobody knows what to do Monday
This Method
10 min → clear vision
- Answer 4 questions in your AI tool
- Get 3-paragraph vision statement
- Team understands what you're building
- Use it to make every decision
Why This Works
10 min
To Get Strategic Clarity
4 questions
That Force Specificity
Zero fluff
Just Honest Answers
Build This Into Your Workflow?
We build custom AI systems that integrate with your stack, handle compliance, and scale with your team. Imagine this framework running automatically—tracking goals, sending weekly updates, flagging risks before they become problems.