1 The five steps
One plan per business, per quarter. It lives on one page and follows the same loop every 90 days.
1 · Write the plan
The AI wizard interviews you, or you fill the form in yourself
2 · Push it
The three projects become real projects and tasks
3 · Share the work
AI agent first, team second, founder last
4 · Watch one number
Each project's KPI shows on the dashboard
5 · Close the quarter
Freeze the result, carry the leftovers
A "KPI" is a Key Performance Indicator — the one number that tells you whether a project worked, like "£249 monthly income" or "40 prospects contacted".
You = a person clicks something Auto = the app does it for you AI = an AI model is asked Data = saved to Airtable (the database)
2 Step 1 — Writing the plan
Pick the context
Business + the quarter you are planning + year
Pick a route
AI wizard, or fill it in yourself
The two halves
Objective Plan + Strategy Plan, one record
Save
Everything goes to the database
Starting a new quarter — pick the NEW quarter You
Select the quarter you are about to plan, not the one just finished. There is no plan there yet, so the page says "Plan Q3 2026" and asks how you want to start. That is the right place to be.
You do not need to open last quarter first. Whichever route you pick, the page fetches the previous quarter itself: the wizard opens by asking what hit and what missed, and the form is pre-filled with last quarter's answers so you are editing rather than starting from a blank page.
Two ways in, same form:
- Start AI Wizard — 34 questions, one at a time. Rough answers are fine; it writes the polished version into the field. It challenges a weak answer once, then accepts it.
- Fill in manually — the same form, blank, with every section open and a hint under each heading. Type as much or as little as you like. The wizard is never compulsory.
The two halves share one record
Objective Plan — why the business exists. Reviewed once a year, tweaked quarterly: the objective; what you do, who for and how; the customer profile; up to 20 team rules; up to 5 things that make you different; the main method step by step; the offer people can't refuse.
Strategy Plan — how you win the next 90 days: the nine-year picture, three-year and one-year targets with measurable numbers, and three quarterly projects. Each project gets one KPI, an owner, a way to track it, a definition of done, and three monthly stepping stones.
The Main Method section — text AND a linked record YouData
Each of the ten method steps has two parts: the words you type, and a picker that links the step to a record in the Main Methods library. The Systemisation page reads the linked records — it takes the first letter of each one, in step order, and spells out your framework (like OPTIMISED). Text alone is invisible to it.
So under every step there is a "Linked record" picker. If a step has text but no linked record, the page shows a warning — it never blocks you, it just tells you. One click on "Create the missing Main Method records from my step text" makes the records for you: the words up to the first dash or full stop become the record's name, the rest becomes its description.
The ↑ and ↓ buttons move a step up or down. Text and linked record always move together, so reordering steps can never scramble the letters of your framework.
3 Step 2 — The push
The "Push Projects →" button turns the three written projects into real, trackable work.
Reads the screen
Uses what you just typed, not what was last saved
AI splits the stones
Each monthly stepping stone becomes one or more jobs
Preview
You see every project and every job before anything is written
Create
Projects + tasks made in the database, linked back to the plan
- AI Each stepping stone is split into separate jobs. "Do X and Y" becomes two jobs; one deliverable stays one job. Words like "skip" and "n/a" are ignored. If the AI call fails, the stone stays whole as a single job rather than being lost.
- You A preview shows everything that would be created. Walk away here and nothing has changed.
- Auto On approval, each project is created carrying its KPI, owner, tracking method, definition of done and the quarter's dates. The new project's ID is written back onto the plan — that back-link stops duplicates and makes renaming safe.
- Auto Each job is due at the end of its month, attached to the project and the business. The app re-sets each due date straight after creating it, because a database automation would otherwise reset new tasks to today.
- Rule A project that already exists is left completely alone — no new copy, no new jobs.
4 Step 3 — Who does each job
Three questions, always in this order. The aim is that AI does up to 90% of repeatable work.
1 · Can an AI agent do it?
Research, drafting, building, checking, computing. 17 agents exist as team members.
2 · If not, can the team?
Hands-on and on-site work goes to the human team
3 · Only then, the founder
Decisions, approvals, credentials, signatures, being somewhere in person
5 Step 3b — The approval gate
The gate sits before the action, not after it. Nothing an agent produces reaches a tenant, a creditor, a prospect or a bank until the owner has said yes to that exact thing.
Prepare
The agent drafts the work. It sends and files nothing.
Ask
The task moves to "Approval" — it shows in the app and as a Slack message with the actual work attached
Decide
Approve ✅, reply with changes, or reject ❌
Carry out
Only after a yes does the agent actually do it
Complete
The agent marks it done itself — approving is not the same as done
Agents earn trust per type of work: 20 approved jobs of that type at 90% or better, with no rejections in the last 10, produces a recommendation to skip the gate. Nothing ever promotes itself — the owner moves the gears, accuracy only advises.
6 Step 4 — How the number reaches the dashboard
Every project carries exactly one number: its name, its unit and the target. The Leadership Dashboard shows one row per live project — current value against target, and when it last moved.
Automatic route
Compute code on the project runs when the dashboard loads and writes the current value
Manual route
Someone types the number in — shown with an amber warning, never as a confident figure
Dashboard row
Name · owner · current vs target · last updated
Step 4a — On-track or off-track decides itself Auto
Nobody sets a project's status by hand, and nothing sits still. It is worked out fresh every time from two things: how far through the quarter you are, and how far through the target you are. Being at 30% of the target 30% of the way through is on target. Being at 5% is not.
| What the dashboard shows | What it means |
|---|---|
| Not Started | The quarter has not begun, or is in its first few days. Nothing is late yet. |
| On-Target | Keeping pace with the quarter, or ahead of it. |
| On-Track | Slightly behind pace, still recoverable. |
| Off-Track | Behind where the calendar says you should be. |
| Completed | Set by you, or frozen when the quarter closes. |
A project pushed for next quarter reads Not Started until that quarter actually starts, then moves on its own — no click, no reminder. A daily job writes the same answer into the database so the Airtable grid agrees with the screen.
Step 4b — The sync check (run it whenever a KPI is added or changed)
A new KPI can quietly collide with a number already on the dashboard, and the collision stays invisible until someone acts on the wrong figure. Eight mechanical checks:
- No two live projects share the same KPI name.
- No KPI shares a name with the dashboard's own cards (this one bit: two different numbers were both called "monthly operating cushion" for a whole quarter, about £3,400 apart).
- A business is linked — otherwise the KPI never shows under a business filter.
- An owner is set.
- A target is set, in the right unit.
- A tracking method is written down, naming exactly which figure it measures.
- The definition of done describes an outside result (money cleared, prospects contacted) — never "all tasks complete", which can be satisfied by simply having too few tasks.
- The number updates itself. Every live KPI carries compute code or a recorded reason why not.
7 Step 5 — Closing the quarter
Freeze first. Carry second. Never the other way round. The "Close the quarter" button on the plan page runs the whole protocol, and shows you a preview before a single thing is written.
1 · True outcome
Completed or Off-Track — marked honestly
2 · KPI at Close
The number it actually reached, frozen
3 · Progress at Close
How much of the work got done, frozen
4 · Closed On
Stamped with the quarter's end date
5 · Closing note
Target, actual, why the gap, where the leftovers went
6 · Record comment
Same summary — timestamped, attributed, can't be overwritten
7 · THEN carry
Each open task is ADDED to the new quarter's project. The old link stays.
What the preview shows You
One panel per project: the suggested outcome (Completed if the KPI or the task list got there, Off-Track otherwise — you can change it), the KPI value to freeze (pre-filled from the current number, editable because the definition of done sometimes measures something slightly different), the frozen progress percentage, the close date, and a pre-written closing note you can edit.
Under each project, every open task with a dropdown: carry it into one of next quarter's projects, or Park it (it stays in this quarter only). If next quarter's projects don't exist yet, everything defaults to Park and the page tells you to write and push next quarter's plan first.
At the end it reports three counts: carried · closed · parked.