Business Goals

Whatever arrives, a brain dump, a vision doc, or interview answers, gets sorted against the ten questions before anything is written. This sorting is working, not output: no mapping table belongs in the artifact. What matters is which questions the input actually answered, which it gestured at, and which it never touched, because that determines where the gaps land. A dump that answers mission and goals but never mentions capacity has not made capacity a non-issue; it has left question 5 open.

THE TEN QUESTIONS, and what each one is for
   1  Mission            why the business exists beyond revenue
   2  Overarching goals  the aspirations, ready to be made measurable
   3  Initiatives        the projects meant to move them
   4  3-6-9-12           what true looks like, observably, over time
   5  Gaps               what could stop it: skills, funding, capacity
   6  Room to test       time, capital, and appetite for trying things
   7  Changes possible   model, pricing, channels, structure
   8  Brand position     how the company should show up
   9  Culture            the governing value system, and what it implies
  10  Decision makers    who decides, by name or role

QUESTIONS 6 AND 10 ARE THE TWO MOST OFTEN SKIPPED and the two
that most often decide whether the goals survive the quarter.
Neither is ever dropped silently.

A GOAL WEARING A MISSION'S CLOTHES is the classic question-1
trap: "grow revenue 40 percent" is a target, not a reason to
exist.

Each aspiration keeps the words the business used and gains the structure it was missing: the metric that would evidence it, a target slot, and a date slot. The shape is the skill's contribution; the numbers are the business's. A goal with no supplied number carries Target needed, visibly, in the row where the number goes. A goal with no supplied date carries Date needed, and it does not borrow the deadline from the goal above it, because a date that arrives by proximity reads exactly like a date that was decided. Names work the same way: an owner nobody named reads Owner needed, never the most plausible person in the room.

ONE STATED GOAL AND ONE UNSTATED, side by side
  - Goal: Reach 40 active recurring monthly clients
    Metric: Count of clients on a monthly retainer
    Target: 40 clients
    By: December 2027

  - Goal: End reliance on tax season as the primary revenue driver
    Metric: Share of annual revenue earned outside tax season
    Target: Target needed
    By: Date needed

THE SECOND GOAL DOES NOT GET DECEMBER. The date belongs to the
goal that was given it. Distributing one stated deadline across
the goals beside it is the most common way a fabricated
commitment enters a plan.

WHAT A LABEL MAY AND MAY NOT SAY
  may:  By: Date needed (stated as "eventually", no date supplied)
  not:  By: December 2027 (assumed, aligns with the revenue goal)

Success gets defined at 3, 6, 9, and 12 months, each checkpoint observable rather than directional. Interim positions may be derived, but only as fractions the supplied target arithmetic actually supports, and they are labeled derived where they appear. The test is whether somebody holding only the inputs could reach the same number. Where they could not, because a starting figure was never supplied, the row says so instead of producing a number that looks measured. Arithmetic on the business's own figures is not invention. Arithmetic on a figure the business never gave is.

A DERIVED INTERIM POSITION, labeled where it sits
  | 6 months | List at 1.5x, derived from the 2x target | List subscribers |

A CHECKPOINT THAT CANNOT BE DERIVED, and says so
  | 6 months | Client count advancing toward 40; derived interim
              target not calculable without starting count
            | Active recurring client count |

THE LINE: could a reader holding only the inputs reach the same
number? If yes, derive it and label it. If no, it is a gap, and
the gap is more useful than the number would have been.

AT REVIEW TIME the same rule governs. A goal with no stated date
keeps its stated target in Checkpoint said with no time fraction
applied, because a reader holding only the inputs has no date to
scale by.

Sections 5 through 10 come from the input with gaps labeled where it went silent, and the document ends there: no closing summary, no count of how many fields were left open, no offer to fill them. The labels are the artifact's working surface, each one a question addressed to whoever knows the answer, sitting where the answer goes. At each checkpoint the doc meets reported actuals. Every goal gets On track, Behind, Ahead, or Cannot call, and calls come from comparing stated target to reported actual rather than from tone. A direction without a number is not an actual. A goal Behind twice running gets an explicit keep-or-pivot decision, because a third hold is how a dead plan stays funded.

THE REVIEW ROW, with both disciplines visible
  | Goal | Checkpoint said | Actual | Call |
  | Cut order defects in half | Defects at 50% of baseline;
    no stated date, no time fraction | Actual needed; reported
    down, number not pulled | Cannot call, actual missing |

FOUR CALLS AND NOTHING ELSE
  On track | Behind | Ahead | Cannot call, actual missing

"Defects are down" is a direction. It sits AFTER Actual needed,
never in its place, because a hedge hardened into a figure is
the same defect as a fabricated one and harder to spot later.

WHERE THIS STOPS. Goals for a person or a team's performance
review are a different artifact. The reply delivers the business
doc and names the destination by slug, goals, because a
paraphrase reads like a handoff without being one.