How should the two days be organized?
In the Founder Blueprint, annual planning splits in two. Day one belongs to the founder, who refreshes the vision, and the leadership team spends the rest of the session rebuilding the year's delivery against it. The session starts from decisions already made: before day one, the founder has read the leadership team's year review and decided which vision entries need refreshing.
The annual also shows the climb. The company looks at what the year delivered and recognizes the work behind it before moving on to the coming year. The team's written year review is the evidence for that discussion.
| Stage | Who owns it | What happens | What it produces |
|---|---|---|---|
| Before the session | Leadership team | Write an honest year review of what worked and what slipped | The evidence the founder reads before deciding the refresh |
| Before day one | Founder | Give every vision entry a verdict and write refreshed wording where it moved | A verdict per entry and an explanation of each change |
| Day one | Founder leads, the team asks questions | Review the year's delivery, then present each verdict and the refreshed vision | The direction the team rebuilds against |
| Day two | Leadership team | Set the coming year's milestones and rebuild the execution half of the plan | An updated plan, with the first quarter's priorities connected to it |
The two-day split and who owns each part are Blueprint design. The order we suggest for day two follows the sequence in which the Blueprint is first installed, and applying it to the annual is our recommendation.
What should the leadership team prepare before the session?
The leadership team writes a year review that the founder reads before the session. The Blueprint asks the team to reflect honestly on the year: what worked and what slipped. Because the founder reads it before deciding the refresh, the team's experience reaches the vision decisions in time to count.
We recommend organizing the review around this year's milestones. For each milestone, state the outcome and cite the evidence, and list any unfinished work separately. Where the outcome differed from the plan, describe the circumstances well enough for the founder to judge whether they touch an assumption behind the vision. Add the constraints the team expects to face next year, since those shape the rebuild on day two.
We recommend agreeing a delivery date that leaves the founder time to read the review and finish the pre-work. A review handed over on the morning of day one leaves little time to weigh it, and reading it is the first item on the founder's readiness checklist.
What should the founder prepare before day one?
The founder completes their half of annual planning before the session. The Blueprint pre-work opens with an account of the year. The founder then reviews each vision entry before preparing how to present the refreshed vision. Work through it with the team's year review open, so each proposed change is tested against what the company experienced.
What did the year prove, and what did it cost?
The founder records what the year proved: the milestones delivered and the figures that moved, plus the result they are proudest of. The pre-work then asks what the year cost the founder, and what they did not do. It also asks what moved in the world this year that the vision has to answer.
We recommend giving the cost question the same care as the results. A founder who worked every weekend to hit a milestone has learned something about the plan, and the vision refresh should take it into account.
Which vision entries are still true?
The founder reviews each entry in the vision half of the plan: the ten-year target, the three-year picture, the core purpose and Our Edge, the core values, the customer section (Proof, Promise, Pain and Plan), and Passion, the founder's reasons for the company and what they will not compromise. Each entry gets one of the Blueprint's verdicts:
- Still true.
- Needs refreshing.
- Wrong now.
Where an entry has moved, the founder writes the refreshed wording before day one. We recommend noting in a sentence why an entry marked still true stays as it is. Our guides to writing core values that settle decisions and what the plan should say about the customer cover how to word those entries.
How will the founder present the changes?
The last part of the pre-work prepares the re-cast: how the founder will present the refreshed vision to the team on day one, and where they will own the change. We recommend a direct explanation of what moved and why the new wording follows from it, especially where the team spent the year delivering against the earlier version.
Two more questions sit in this part. The first asks what the founder stopped doing this year and what they still touch that they should not, the move from operator to owner covered in our guide to moving from founder to chairman. The second asks what the founder wants to be deciding at the end of the next stage, including whether that decision is an exit.
The founder is ready for day one when they have read the team's year review and know which entries they are refreshing. Those are the Blueprint's two readiness checks, and we recommend confirming both before the day-one agenda is final.
What happens on day one?
The founder leads day one. We recommend opening with what the year delivered, including the founder's own account of what it cost. Then present the vision entries one at a time with their verdicts. Where wording changed, show the old and new versions and explain the decision. The founder owns each change, including what it does to a direction the team had understood and worked toward.
We recommend leaving time for questions about what the refreshed entries mean for the year ahead. A leader who cannot say how a revised three-year picture affects their function needs an answer before the team turns it into milestones.
Should the leadership team rewrite the vision at annual planning? In the Founder Blueprint, no. The vision stays founder-owned and the founder refreshes it at the annual. The team's year review is evidence the founder weighs before deciding, and the team owns the execution rebuilt after the re-cast. Why the founder holds the vision, and how to judge when it should change, is covered in our guide to who sets the company vision.
How does the team rebuild the plan on day two?
The Blueprint has the leadership team reset the milestones for the coming year and rebuild the execution half at the annual. The order below follows the sequence used when the Blueprint is first installed. Applying it to the annual is our recommendation.
1. Set the coming year's milestones
Start with the milestones, with the refreshed three-year picture beside the proposed list. The team should be able to say what progress the coming year makes toward that picture. Write the milestones before any detailed execution work, so everything after has a set of annual outcomes to be checked against. For each milestone we recommend recording the intended outcome, how completion will be recognized, a target date and who reports progress. A milestone with an unclear link to the three-year picture gets resolved while it is drafted. How to work from the three-year picture to the year's milestones is covered in our guide to one-year milestones.
2. Rebuild the execution half
Next, review the critical functions, one owner each. Then review the people priorities and core processes, followed by the weekly scorecard, beginning with cash. Check each against the reset milestones as you go, and record agreed changes in the plan during the session, so an arrangement that cannot deliver a milestone shows up while the team can still fix it. Our guides to mapping critical functions, core processes and the weekly scorecard cover each piece's own upkeep.
3. Set the first quarter's priorities
In the install sequence the first quarterly priorities come after the execution work, and we recommend the same order at the annual. Choosing three to five priorities is covered in our guides to the founder bottleneck and scaling past $5M.
4. Confirm the cadence
The execution half also holds the meeting cadence. We recommend confirming the year's meeting dates before the session closes. Each quarter then measures delivery against the founder's vision, and the year's milestones are reviewed at every quarterly and reset at the next annual. Our guide to running the quarterly review covers that session.
What should annual planning produce?
The annual should produce one updated plan: the refreshed vision and the team's rebuilt execution half. The Blueprint keeps that plan to one page, two at most, with one vocabulary and one meeting cadence. Check the finished plan against those limits before the session closes.
We recommend a final read-through that tests the link between the two halves. Can the team trace each milestone to the three-year picture? Does each critical function have one owner? Do the first quarter's priorities serve this year's milestones? Record each unresolved question with an owner and a deadline. If its answer could change a milestone, mark that milestone provisional until the answer comes back.
We recommend keeping the team's year review and the founder's pre-work in a separate record linked from the plan. They show the evidence considered and the reasons behind each verdict, and they are worth reading when preparing the next annual.
Who facilitates, and how involved is the founder on day two?
In the Founder Blueprint an outside coach facilitates the annual in the first years, and by the end of the install the leadership team runs it alone. The coach facilitates and the founder leads the vision work on day one. We recommend naming one person to record agreed changes in the plan as the session goes, and agreeing these roles in advance once the team runs the annual itself.
After the first annual, the Blueprint sets the founder's role as intervening only on direction, and we recommend holding that boundary during the rebuild. The founder answers questions about what the company is trying to become and leaves the decisions about how the year gets delivered to the team.
Where should we start this week?
Set the dates for the two days, then agree when the leadership team will hand over its written year review. Leave the founder enough time after that date to finish the entry-by-entry verdicts.
Build the agenda around the founder's re-cast on day one and the team's rebuild on day two, and use the two readiness checks before confirming it. We built these recommendations around the annual in the Founder Blueprint, where the founder sets the vision and the leadership team owns its delivery.
Frequently asked
In the Founder Blueprint, annual planning runs over two days. The founder reads the team's year review beforehand and gives every vision entry a verdict. Day one shows what the year delivered and presents the refreshed vision. On day two the leadership team resets the coming year's milestones and rebuilds the execution half of the plan. We recommend following the order used when the Blueprint is first installed, then setting the first quarter's priorities and confirming the meeting dates.
Before the session, the founder decides the refresh entry by entry. On day one, the founder presents the changes and takes responsibility for them. The leadership team writes an honest year review before the session and rebuilds the year's delivery after the re-cast. We recommend that the founder answers questions about direction during the rebuild while the team decides how to deliver.
In the Founder Blueprint, no. The vision stays founder-owned and the founder refreshes it at the annual. The team's year review is evidence the founder reads before deciding each verdict. The team then uses the direction presented on day one to reset the coming year's milestones and rebuild the execution half of the plan.
Read the team's year review first. Record what the year proved, what it cost you and what you did not do, and what moved in the world that the vision has to answer. Give every vision entry a verdict of still true, needs refreshing or wrong now, write the refreshed wording, and prepare how you will present and own each change.
One updated plan, one page or two at most, with the refreshed vision and the rebuilt execution half: the coming year's milestones, critical functions with one owner each, people priorities, core processes, the weekly scorecard with cash first, and the meeting cadence. We recommend linking the first quarter's priorities to it and keeping the year review and founder pre-work in a separate record.
Next step
If much of the company's direction is still unwritten, the Leadership Scorecard is a ten-minute self-assessment across twelve leadership dimensions and the six drivers of founder-led growth, and it shows where the company still depends on you.