Most planning lives at two distances: this quarter, and this year. The horizon that gets skipped — three years out — is the one that quietly decides whether today's fires are worth fighting at all.
The tyranny of the urgent middle distance
A year is long enough to feel strategic and short enough to be dominated by what's already in motion. Real direction — the markets you'll be in, the capabilities you'll need, the things you'll have stopped doing — lives further out than that. Skip it, and you optimize hard for a present that may not be anywhere near where you actually want to be.
A three-year view doesn't need precision. It needs a position on a few questions:
- What do we want to be true in three years that isn't true now?
- What capability will we need then that takes longer than a year to build?
- What are we doing today only because we've always done it?
The point of a longer horizon isn't to predict three years out. It's to make sure this year's effort is pointed somewhere you'd actually want to arrive.
You won't get the three-year picture right, and you don't need to. You need it to exist — so the quarter's decisions have something to aim at beyond the next fire.