30-60-90 Day Plan: An updated step-by-step guide

Writing a 90-day plan can seem like a daunting task, but with the right strategy, it can be you and your employees’ guide to prioritizing and completing work. What is a 90-day work plan? Good question. Put simply, a 90-day plan is a concrete plan establishing your company’s 90-day plans, activities, priorities, and goals.

Before we lay out the perfect 90-day work plan, let’s briefly discuss why a 90-day work plan is important in the first place.

It Fills Everyone In

A 90-day plan is a great method of making sure that everyone knows what the company’s priorities are. When you get a new hiree, instead of overwhelming them with information about where the company is headed, have them read the 90-day plan. This will not only inform them about the course of the ship, but it will also encourage a growth mindset. Your most valuable employees will grow with the company, Instead of settling for the bare minimum.

It Sets Goals

It seems like there is so much to do in the modern workplace, and even more so for entrepreneurs. In fact, entrepreneurs report poor work-life balance. When going through countless managerial activities, it is easy to lose track of time. 

Let’s face it. Your employees may not dive as deep into work as you. Most of them don’t think about the company’s 90-day goals when showing up at work in the morning. They’re just taking it day by day. 

If you would like to remind your employees of the bigger picture, and motivate them to join in on the efforts, share the 90-day plan with them. This way, you can align your goals for the company with their goals for their future at the company. If suitable, you can even encourage them to create their own 90-day plans, so that they break down your plan into actionable tasks they have power over. 

See Related: How do Time Management Activities Boost Productivity?

We could list many reasons as to why adopting a 90-day work plan is a good idea, but we’ll let you decide whether it suits your company’s unique needs. If you’re thinking of giving it a try, here’s how you write the perfect 90-day work plan.

Ever heard of the 30-60-90 rule?

If the sound of a 90-day plan overwhelms you, you are not alone. An experienced productivity coach explains that people see big tasks as unapproachable and give up before they give it a real shot. “It’s difficult to know where to begin”, she explains. We’ve seen this happen way too many times, which is why we are strong supporters of breaking tasks down into smaller parts.

To get started with your 90-day work plan, start off small. The 30-60-90 day rule is self-explanatory. It suggests that you can successfully create a 90-day plan by creating a 30 and 60-day plan first. Breaking down goals into action items makes them more feasible.

30-Day Plan

Think about what you want to achieve within the following month. Check all that apply:

✅ Internal Deadlines

✅ External Deadlines

✅ Individual Projects

✅ Team Projects

✅ Administrative work

✅ Measurable results

Think about all these components of your 90-day work plan within the reach of 30 days. In other words, what do you need to do for the next 30 days to achieve your 90-day goals? Do you have to complete a site within the time frame? Include that. Is there an internal deadline within the following month? Add that to the plan as well. Try to think of all key activities and projects necessary for the flow of work within the following month, and write it all down.

See Related: How do Time Management Activities Boost Productivity?

60-Day Plan

Once you’ve done that, scale it up. What about the month after that? What are your 60-day plans? What deadlines are closing up? What are your priorities? By now, you can probably guess that you will do the same for the 90-day period. 

Only now, you have to think even further into the future. Understand that every plan devised for your business will have to be consistent with its objectives. When looking at them in relation to each other - rather than piece by piece, you may be able to find ways of optimizing your time better. Try to estimate how many resources you need to achieve your 90-day plan. This way, you can also guide your workers. If they know how much time they need to spend on a task,  they will be able to make better and faster decisions, thereby making better use of their time.

Break it Down

If you thought you were breaking down tasks until now, we’re going to encourage you to take it even further. Only now, we’re not breaking tasks down in terms of time. 

For instance, a construction company manager might have thought of something along the lines of “Build a new terrace for the client in Cuyahoga County” for their 30-day plan. Although this is a good start, it is still too vague. We would encourage the construction company manager to break it down into something along the lines of:

All of the sudden, the task doesn’t seem as daunting. Now, you actually have actionable insights into what you can start with. Remember, that’s what the productivity expert said is the hardest part - knowing where to start. Although we know that not all readers will be in the construction industry, you can always adopt a similar plan to your industry.

See Related: Highly Effective Project Management Tools and Techniques

Keep Track

If you check the last checkpoint in the two previous sections, you can probably notice a pattern. Documenting is very important to any work plan, and especially to a long-term work plan. Tiny details can go unnoticed, which may later turn into problems that are difficult to trace. To keep track of all activities and employees, you will need some help with time and team tracking. 

Luckily, help is at the tip of your finger. Built to ease the administrative load on you, Atto offers a comprehensive platform where you can track time spent on a project, the number of hours spent on vacation and PTO, as well as managing team activity to find out where your team is and what they’re working on. We mentioned the importance of documenting for a reason. Atto will actually create timesheet reports and automatically share them with you. 

Having this kind of data available will enable smart and effective decision-making. Now, you don’t have to be in the dark. You can create future plans based on actual numbers from previous months. Wondering how much time a project will take you? You can always check the logs from that similar project from a month ago. Unsure of how many workers are needed on the site? That’s right, you can also check the logs for that. 

See Related: Best Time Tracking Apps for iPhone in 2020