I used to do strategic planning year-by-year looking at the previous year and then thinking of an incremental improvement over the previous year. This worked, but we missed many opportunities because we didn’t start with a vision of the future.

High growth companies look out at least 3-5 years into the future. They decide when they will double their growth and what markets they will dominate. Starting with the end in mind, you work backwards from your end goal to determine what has to be done this year and then this quarter.