How to Plan a Quarter in 30 Minutes with AI

Let’s be honest — traditional quarterly planning is broken.

You start with good intentions.

Then you get a 12-tab spreadsheet, five Miro boards, and two dozen Slack threads.

By the time the quarter starts, most of your team has already moved on.

It’s not that planning isn’t important — it’s that the process often creates more friction than focus.

Here’s how we changed that — and where AI can make the biggest difference.

🛠️ The Traditional Process

The usual quarterly planning workflow looks something like this:

• Meet with each department to gather priorities

• Try to align them around company goals

• Argue over who owns what

• Spend hours wordsmithing Objectives

• End up with vague Key Results and 30+ initiatives

• Repeat every 90 days

It’s slow, disjointed, and often disconnected from actual execution.

⚡ The AI-Assisted Workflow (and What It Doesn’t Replace)

With AI-powered planning, the process compresses dramatically — but only if you feed it well.

Here’s the simplified version:

Step 1: Upload your strategic context

This is the most important step.

You can’t skip the prep. The AI needs thorough, well-written inputs:

• Strategic priorities

• Metrics and targets

• Customer feedback

• Known risks and constraints

Garbage in = garbage out.

The better your documentation, the sharper the output.

Step 2: AI proposes draft Objectives & Key Results

It pulls from the uploaded content and generates a structured plan — with focus areas, measurable outcomes, and draft OKRs.

Step 3: Async review by team members

This isn’t a replacement for alignment.

You still need a workflow for comments, suggestions, and shared understanding — but now you’re working from a solid draft, not a blank canvas.

Step 4: Output = Actionable, Discussable Plan

You don’t leave this workflow with a perfect final plan.

You leave with a smart first draft — and a big head start.

By the time you hit your live planning meeting, you’re not brainstorming — you’re finalizing.

🧠 Why This Approach Works

• ✅ Cuts out low-leverage prep time

• ✅ Starts the conversation with structure, not chaos

• ✅ Turns strategy into something your team can actually act on

It’s not “done in 30 minutes” — but it’s 80% done, and ready for refinement.

🔍 Sample Output

Objective: Improve New Customer Activation

Key Results:

• Increase % of users reaching “aha moment” in week 1 from 42% → 65%

• Launch revised onboarding sequence by July 10

• Run 5 user interviews per month to validate changes

Task Breakdown:

✅ Draft onboarding flow v2

✅ Schedule interviews

✅ Build KPI dashboard

✅ Push to production

No noise. Just actionable structure.

📬 Final Thought

Planning isn’t about writing the perfect strategy doc.

It’s about getting your team to clarity — quickly — so they can focus on execution.

With the right inputs and a solid async flow, AI can shrink a week-long planning cycle into 30 minutes of actual progress.

👋 Try It for Yourself

Plan Focus helps teams go from strategy docs to structured plans — without the drama.

You won’t leave with a perfect plan.

But you’ll have the best starting point you’ve ever seen.