What belongs in the ten-year target and the three-year picture?
The ten-year target records the results that would tell the founder the company has met or exceeded its potential. Each result carries a figure the founder means and can explain, and the founder's own time in the business can be one of them.
The three-year picture describes the company on the way there, including what the founder does each week. In the Founder Blueprint that description is cut to three markers, each a statement of where the company will be in three years. The Blueprint keeps the plan to one page, two at most.
Ten-year and three-year horizons appear in several planning methods, and the Entrepreneurial Operating System uses the same two names, 10-Year Target and 3-Year Picture. What the Blueprint specifies is who writes the two entries and how they are tested. The founder writes them with an outside coach, and the leadership team builds the execution half of the plan afterwards.
| Entry | Who writes it | Horizon | What it describes | Form | How it is tested |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ten-year target | Founder, with an outside coach | Ten years | Results that would show the company met or exceeded its potential | A short list of results, each with a number or metric | The coach tests the figures against the business as it stands |
| Three-year picture | Founder, with an outside coach | Three years | The company on its way to the ten-year target | Three markers, each a statement of where the company will be | The coach looks for tensions with the founder's other answers, and the founder writes it in words the team can repeat |
| One-year milestones | Leadership team, from a founder first pass | This year | Progress that shows the three-year picture is on track | Three to five milestones, each with a figure | Would they prove the three-year picture is on track |
Who writes each entry is Blueprint design, and so are the three-marker format and the milestone range. The first two rows are this page. The third row is the leadership team's first piece of work, covered in our guide to turning a three-year picture into one-year milestones.
What should a ten-year target include?
The Blueprint pre-work asks: "Ten years from now, what results would tell you this company met or exceeded its potential?" The pre-work asks for the big, specific figures you mean. We recommend answering in full before you edit the wording.
The guidance points to these areas, and asks for a number or metric on each result you include:
- Revenue: the annual sales the company reaches.
- Profit: the earnings at that scale, with the profit measure stated.
- Valuation: what the company is worth.
- Locations: the footprint the company operates from.
- Headcount: the size of the team.
- Your own time: the hours you intend to work in the business, or another measure of your involvement.
We recommend defining each figure as you write it. If you include profit, say whether you mean operating profit or something else. For valuation, we recommend writing down what would support the figure.
The coach's draft keeps your numbers where you gave them, and the figures stay open to testing in the Founder's Vision Session. If a target changes under questioning, the new figure should be one you have decided on and can explain to your leaders.
How should you write the first version of the three-year picture?
The Blueprint pre-work asks: "Now look at the company three years from now, and everything is developing well. What do you see?" Stand in that future and describe what surrounds you in the present tense. Sentence openings such as "We serve..." and "The team runs..." help.
We recommend writing a full description before you cut it to three markers. A long draft surfaces details a short target hides. "A stronger management team" means little until you write down what those managers handle without you.
The pre-work names the areas to cover. These are the questions we suggest asking of each:
- Revenue: what does the company bring in each year, and where does it come from?
- Customers: who does the company serve, and which relationships have ended?
- Team: which decisions do leaders make without the founder stepping in?
- Reputation: what do customers come to the company for?
- Your activities: what work fills the founder's week?
We recommend describing conditions someone could check in three years, such as "The service manager owns scheduling and handles routine customer escalations."
We recommend keeping the long draft at hand while the coach questions your choices. It helps you explain the decision behind each marker.
How do you cut the picture to three markers?
The Blueprint calls for three markers, each a statement of where the company will be in three years. We recommend letting them cover different parts of the company. Three versions of a revenue goal leave most of the business undescribed.
Read the full description and pick the conditions that would make that future recognizable. A financial marker can sit beside a statement about which customers the company serves. The third marker can describe the management capability the founder's intended role depends on. Change the split if the company's most important three-year question lies somewhere else.
We recommend giving each marker a figure or an observable test where one exists. Revenue has a ready measure. A marker about leadership needs a description of the decisions leaders own and the situations that still go to the founder.
Cut repeated ideas and loose adjectives. Keep the details that would change a hiring decision or a decision about which customers to take. If a marker carries clauses about unrelated outcomes that a leader would struggle to remember together, split the idea or drop part of it.
Before the first full team day, the Blueprint pre-work asks for both entries "in the plain words you want the team to repeat." We recommend testing whether a leader could explain each marker in their own words. If the marker only makes sense with your commentary, rewrite it.
What does the coach test before the entries are settled?
The founder and the coach write these entries in the Founder's Vision Session. The coach draws out the founder's thinking and tests it, and the content stays the founder's. Each entry is checked against the business as it stands: would it survive contact with reality?
The testing starts with the founder's own pre-work. The coach looks for tensions between answers, such as work the founder says they will hand off for good that still appears in the three-year picture, or a stated value next to a customer the founder still keeps.
The pre-work also asks which customers the founder should stop working with. That answer matters when the revenue marker depends on keeping or growing those same accounts. We recommend asking the founder to explain how those answers fit together before deciding whether an entry needs to change.
The coach also tests the entries against the founder's own life. The pre-work asks what the founder wants the company to make possible for them personally, and what their role is three years out. Read the picture against the work you will hand off for good and the work you want to keep. Our guide to how much front-line work a founder should keep covers measuring where your hours go today.
How should the three-year picture connect to the ten-year target?
We recommend checking that reaching the three-year picture would put the company on a credible path to the ten-year target. Look at the capabilities the later growth will need. A larger service territory, for example, may depend on managers who can run operations the founder does not see every day.
The three-year picture can show that part of the ten-year target has no support yet. If the target assumes a second location, ask what the company must be able to do by year three to open one. The answer may change one of the markers.
Also check what each entry asks of the founder. In our judgment, a founder who still approves routine work in the picture should explain how that responsibility changes as the company grows. You should be able to explain how the company gets from one horizon to the other.
What could these entries look like for a Miami service company?
A hypothetical illustration
The company and every figure here are invented. A commercial HVAC service company in Miami-Dade brings in $3 million a year. Its founder still coordinates the technicians and handles routine customer escalations.
Its ten-year target reads: "Annual revenue of $8 million at a 12 percent operating margin, after paying a market salary for the founder's role. Two service locations. The founder works 15 hours a week in the business." Each result gives the coach a specific figure to test.
After writing the long description, the founder cuts it to three markers, each covering a different part of the business:
- We bring in $4.5 million a year at a 10 percent operating margin, after paying a market salary for the founder's role.
- Maintenance agreements with commercial property customers make up half of annual revenue.
- The service manager owns scheduling and routine customer escalations, and the founder works 30 hours a week, on major accounts and developing managers.
The coach would ask whether the company can staff that service work and still earn the stated margin. The customer marker needs its own check: which current accounts fit it, and what happens to the revenue from the accounts the founder wants to leave?
The management marker tests the founder's handoff. If the founder's other answers still keep routine scheduling decisions for the founder, the picture holds a conflict to resolve. The coach would also ask what in these three markers prepares the company for the second location the ten-year target assumes. The figures illustrate the checks and are no benchmark for another company.
Who works on these entries next, and when do they change?
These two entries sit in the founder's half of the Blueprint, alongside the founder's reasons for the company, the customer positioning, the core purpose and values, and the company's edge. Why the founder holds that half, and how it is presented to the leadership team, is covered in our guide to who sets the company vision.
The leadership team's first delivery act is turning the three-year picture into three to five one-year milestones, each with a figure, starting from a first pass the founder brings.
The founder revisits both entries at each annual planning session, and between annual sessions they stay stable. Our guide to running annual planning covers the refresh.
Where should we start this week?
Write your answers to the two pre-work questions this week, with a figure on each ten-year result. Then write down every tension you notice between those answers and the rest of your plans, for the coach to test. The Founder Blueprint is where we write these entries with founders and hand them to the leadership team to deliver.
Frequently asked
Ask what results, ten years from now, would show the company met or exceeded its potential, and give each result a number or metric. The Founder Blueprint pre-work points the founder to revenue, profit, valuation, locations, headcount and the founder's own time in the business. An outside coach then tests the figures against the business as it stands.
In the Founder Blueprint, the finished three-year picture is three markers, each a statement of where the company will be in three years. We recommend writing a fuller description first, covering revenue, customers, the team, reputation and the founder's own work, then keeping what defines the company you intend and giving each marker a figure or an observable test.
In the Founder Blueprint, the founder writes the ten-year target and the three-year picture with an outside coach before the leadership team is involved. The coach draws the founder's thinking out and tests each entry against the business as it stands. The leadership team then builds the execution half of the plan, starting with this year's milestones.
Yes. The Founder Blueprint pre-work asks what the founder's work will be three years out and what the company should make possible for the founder personally, including the work they will hand off for good and the work they want to keep. We recommend reading the three markers against that intended week to check that the company described supports it.
In the Founder Blueprint, the founder revisits both at each annual planning session and gives every vision entry one verdict: still true, needs refreshing, or wrong now. Between annual sessions the entries stay stable, and the leadership team plans its milestones against them.
Next step
If the company's direction still lives mostly in your head, 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.