A 30-60-90 operations plan is a structured three-month framework that takes a chaotic growing business from reactive firefighting to a documented, running operation. Month one finds the bottlenecks. Month two builds the systems. Month three embeds the changes with the team. The whole thing lives in one document, reviewed weekly, and replaces the twenty-seven half-finished spreadsheets you currently call “ops.”
Why 30-60-90 and not just “a plan”
The shape is the point. Long plans die in month two. Short plans don’t survive contact with reality. Ninety days is the sweet spot: long enough to actually ship infrastructure, short enough that the whole team remembers the goal.
Breaking it into three phases also maps to how attention works. Month one you diagnose. Month two you build. Month three you transfer ownership. Skip any phase and the plan fails.
The template
Month 1 - Find the bottlenecks (days 1–30)
Goals:
- Map the top five operational risks in the business.
- Identify the two or three things breaking right now.
- Ship two quick wins.
- Write a baseline State of Operations document.
Deliverables:
- Risk register (one page, ranked by likelihood × impact).
- Quick-win log with measurable outcomes.
- State of Operations written in plain English, shared with the leadership team.
Common quick wins:
- A live KPI dashboard (one number per function).
- A sales pipeline hygiene pass.
- A contract review flag list for the next five deals.
Month 2 - Build the systems (days 31–60)
Goals:
- Stand up the three or four priority processes identified in month one.
- Implement a KPI reporting cadence.
- Build the contract review framework.
- Scaffold sales operations where missing.
Deliverables:
- Documented processes (hiring, financial close, onboarding, contract review).
- Monthly KPI report template, used for real in month two.
- Sales ops CRM hygiene in place.
- Contract review workflow running.
Anti-pattern to avoid: building too many processes at once. Pick three or four that will move the business the most and ship those properly. You can always add more in the next ninety days.
Month 3 - Embed the changes (days 61–90)
Goals:
- Train one or two people to own each new system.
- Establish OKRs for the next quarter.
- Transition the COO / operator out of day-to-day delivery.
- Deliver a documented handover report.
Deliverables:
- Handover pack for each system (one page per system, plus supporting templates).
- Quarterly OKRs agreed by the leadership team.
- A sustainable reporting cadence (weekly, monthly, quarterly).
- The COO (fractional or full-time) working on the business rather than in it.
Anti-pattern to avoid: believing you’re done. Month three is the start of the embedding work, not the end. Plan for a month four review.
How to run the plan yourself
- One page. Printed. A 30-60-90 plan that lives in a single printable page gets used. Anything longer gets skipped.
- Weekly review, not quarterly. Fifteen minutes every Monday. What shipped last week? What’s slipping? What’s next?
- Ruthless scope control. If something new comes up in month two, it goes into the backlog for the next plan - not this one. Protect the original three or four priorities.
- One owner per line item. Every task has a name next to it. “The team” owns nothing.
If you want help
The Edwards Practice runs this exact template on every Fractional COO engagement. If you’d rather not run it yourself, book a discovery call - we’ll either help you run it, or point you at someone better suited if we’re not the fit.