What does your business look like in five years if capability building goes well?
A diagnostic and planning tool for taking stock of where you are on the journey, and defining what playing the long game looks like in practice.
What it is
The last tool in the toolkit, and in some ways the most important. Everything before it is about building something; this is about stepping back to ask what you're building toward, how far along you are, and what the honest current state looks like. It combines a diagnostic (where are you now?) with a planning exercise (what to do in the next 90 days). Use it at the beginning of a journey, and again every year.
The four parts
The Franchise Prototype Test: if you handed the business to a competent new owner tomorrow, what would they find, what would break, what couldn't they do without two or three specific people? Where you are in the journey: five stages from pre-start to mature. The four principles self-assessment: think big, make it consultative, treat it as a long-term investment, be in the journey (score out of 20; most starting out score 8 to 10, and that's fine). The long game picture: specifically what the organisation can do in five years that it can't now, and the single most important thing to do in the next 90 days.
The annual review
Revisit each year with your original Business Landscape Map alongside. The delta between the map you drew in Chapter 2 and how the operation looks now is the most honest evidence of capability built.
How to use it
At the start of a journey and annually. Senior leadership who own vision and investment. 60 minutes. You'll produce an honest current-state assessment, a five-year picture, and a 90-day action with a named owner.
Download
Kit includes the audit workbook, a capability maturity model, a five-year roadmap template, a structures guide (budget model, governance, cadence), and an annual review workshop format. Access this tool
"The organisations that build something genuinely lasting think about capability building as a way of running the business... every year, they're in a different category from competitors still running the same race."
Building Capability, Ch 12