Now, Where, How is a three-question planning model, used in a fixed order. Now is where the business actually is, in numbers you can evidence. Where is the destination, with a date on it and figures attached. How is the short list of moves that closes the gap between the two. The order is the whole discipline, and most plans that go nowhere went nowhere because they started at How.
Most plans open with a list of things the owner intends to do: a new website, more marketing, a hire, better systems. That is a list of Hows written without an agreed Now and without a defined Where — which is why it tends to be last year’s list with the dates changed, and why nobody can say afterwards whether it worked.
What is the Now, Where, How model?
Three questions, and the order matters far more than the format. You can run the whole thing on one sheet of paper ruled into three columns. If it does not fit on that page it will not be remembered, let alone used.
Now — where you actually are
Not how the business feels. Turnover and gross margin by type of work rather than in total, because an average always hides the fact that one line is subsidising another. Overheads, split between what is genuinely fixed and what moves with volume. Net profit with the owner properly paid, because a profit that only exists because you underpay yourself is not profit. Cash, and the position on tax and VAT. Customer concentration, expressed as the share of revenue coming from your largest three. Capacity, meaning what the business could deliver at full stretch with the people it has today. And your own working hours, honestly counted, evenings included.
That last one belongs in the numbers rather than in the conversation. An owner working long weeks who wants a much bigger business needs to see that the plan requires the hours to fall while the revenue rises. That is a completely different plan from doing more of the same.
Where — the destination, dated
A destination with no date and no numbers is a mood. Grow the business, get better systems and take a step back are all statements nobody can ever be held to. Write it instead as a sentence with a date and five figures attached — turnover, margin, profit, your own hours, and the concentration limit you will not cross — and you have made yourself accountable. That is precisely why most owners avoid writing it.
How — the two or three moves that close the gap
Not everything you could do. The handful of things that, if they happened, would make most of the rest of the list irrelevant. Three lanes, not eleven. If everything is a How, nothing is a priority.
Why it matters when you own the business
Plans fail at Now far more often than they fail at How. An owner who believes gross margin is around forty per cent when it is closer to thirty-three will build a plan that cannot work, and will spend a year wondering why all that effort is not showing up in the bank.
Vagueness at Where is protective in the same way. While the destination stays general, nobody can say the year missed. The moment it carries a date and five numbers, the plan becomes testable — and a testable plan is the only kind worth writing down.
There is a third reason, and it is the one owners feel most. A plan built on an honest Now creates permission. Once the gap between two real numbers is visible, the argument about which three things matter stops being a matter of taste and starts being arithmetic.
How to use it
1. Build the Now from the accounts, not from memory
Six numbers to start with: turnover, gross margin, overheads, net profit, cash and your own hours. Look them up. Do not estimate them. It is an afternoon’s work at most, and it is the one part of the exercise that cannot be skipped.
2. Write the Where with a date and five numbers
Three years is usually the right horizon for the destination, with this year’s twelve-month plan sitting inside it. Put your own role and hours in it. A destination that does not say what you will personally be doing is not finished.
3. Test the arithmetic before you choose the Hows
Does the destination actually produce the profit you have written down, once the extra overheads that come with it are in? Then run the same revenue again at today’s margin. That single comparison usually shows which lever the plan really depends on, and the answer is often cheaper and faster than the one the owner had in mind.
4. Choose three Hows and delete the rest
Each survivor gets a named owner and a first action with a date. Anything without both is a topic, not a plan.
5. Diarise the ninety-day review now
One hour, three questions: did the Now numbers move, is Where still right, and are these still the right three Hows? A plan reviewed twice a year is a document. The same plan reviewed every ninety days is a management system.
The mistake most owners make
They start at How, because How is the enjoyable part. Tactics feel like progress and they can be started on Monday. A year of energetic Hows pointed at an undefined Where produces a busy business that has not moved.
The second mistake is refreshing the plan without redoing Now. The destination gets rolled forward, the actions get rewritten, and the baseline is quietly assumed to be the same as last year. It is not, and the whole value of the exercise sits in the gap between two honest numbers.
The third is treating Now as a criticism. Owners soften the baseline because it reads as a judgement on them personally, then wonder why the plan built on it does not hold. A blunt Now is not an insult. It is the only starting point that gives a plan a chance.
Coaching questions to sit with
- Out of 10, how accurate do you believe your Now numbers are — and when did you last check rather than assume?
- Could a member of your team state the destination and its date without prompting? If not, it is your plan rather than the business’s.
- Which of your current activities would you stop tomorrow if you were honest about whether it moves you towards Where?
- What would have to be true in three years’ time for you to say the last three years were worth it?
Define both ends before you draw the arrows. Get Now honest and Where specific, and the Hows stop being a wish list and start being a short list of decisions. An arrow with only one end defined is a wish.
This model is the spine of the strategy work in Business Coaching. For the level below it, The Planning Hierarchy shows how vision, strategy, plan and action connect — and if you own the business with somebody else, Partner Alignment has to be settled before a Where can honestly be written at all.
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Common questions
What is the difference between Where and How?
Where is the destination and How is the route. Where answers what the business will look like on a stated date, in numbers: turnover, margin, profit, your own hours, customer concentration. How answers which two or three moves close the gap between that and today. Owners collapse the two constantly, writing hire an operations manager as though it were a destination. It is not, it is a move, and it only earns its place once the destination proves it is needed. Define both ends of the gap first. The moves that matter usually become obvious the moment the arithmetic between the two ends is done properly.
How many numbers does a proper Now actually need?
Most owners can produce a turnover figure and a rough sense of profit, and that is a headline rather than a baseline. A Now worth planning from usually runs to eight or nine numbers: turnover and gross margin by type of work, overheads split into fixed and variable, net profit with you properly paid, cash and the tax position, customer concentration, capacity at full stretch, and your own weekly hours. Every one of them can be looked up rather than guessed, and pulling them together takes an afternoon at most. The discipline is not the length of the list. It is refusing to estimate a single one of them.
How often should a Now, Where, How plan be reviewed?
Every ninety days, in an hour, with three questions. Did the Now numbers move? Is Where still the right destination? Are these still the right three Hows? Anything less frequent and the plan becomes a document you wrote rather than a system you run, because a twelve-month plan looked at twice a year cannot correct anything. Where itself should hold for the full three years unless something genuinely changes in the market or in what you want from the business. If the destination moves every quarter, the problem is not the plan. It is that the destination was never really chosen.