[3-1-3] Making sense of a mess

Hey 🙂

This past month has been a bit of a challenge with my 3-1-3 since committing properly to the CEO role at QFG.

The main sticking point has been the focus area — specifically, the single most important thing. That’s gotten messy.

Part of it is just the nature of the job changing. Before officially stepping into the CEO role, I had a lot of freedom to sit with one project, go deep on it, build something. You could call it a builder’s life. One thing at a time.

Now I’m moving into being the manager of the business. And that shift means it’s going to take me some time — probably at least another few months — to really figure out what this role needs to look like day-to-day.

To help myself get a handle on it, I’ve identified these five key areas I want to keep a pulse on:

Demand — What are we doing to drive demand this week?
Sales — What sales activities are driving revenue?
Delivery — What are we doing to improve the quality of our coaching?
IP/Frameworks — How are we developing and strengthening our intellectual property?
CEO/Strategy — What am I doing to improve how we build a robust and scalable business?

So in my 3-1-3 for May, I added these as sub-areas — both for reflecting on progress and for planning the week ahead. And it’s worth saying: I’m not doing all the work across these areas. A lot of my time now is spent working with others, helping them do their best work and make their best contribution.

Beyond the five areas, there are a few bigger things I’ve been turning over in my head:

How I communicate as CEO — thinking about the whole team, making sure I’m giving clear direction and communicating often.
The rhythm of the company — the Revenue Team meeting, the weekly owners’ huddle, the bi-weekly coaching for coaches, the CEO dashboard. Finding the right balance of structure, without it becoming too much structure.
Operational standards — from the quality of our coaching, to our brand, to our emails, to how we look after each other.
Getting into the finances — revenue, cash, profitability, pipeline, forecasting.

The tension I’m sitting with is this: I know that if I’m patient enough and keep chipping away at building the role, the mess will start to make more sense. Clarity will come. But I’m not just accepting the mess either — I’m still asking myself, every week, what’s the one thing that matters most right now. That’s not going to change.

One small shift that’s helped: with our owners’ huddle on a Thursday, I’ve started drafting my 3-1-3 on Thursday instead of Friday. I get a rough version down, talk it through with the team, and then on Friday I firm it up and plan properly for the week ahead. It’s been a nice little change to my usual rhythm.

Here’s what I’d encourage you to take from this: even when things feel like a mess, the worst thing you can do is nothing.

A mess can be paralysing. I get that. But the answer isn’t to wait until things feel clear before you write your 3-1-3. The answer is to write it anyway — even when it’s messy, even when you’re not sure what your single most important objective is, even when you feel like you don’t quite have a handle on things.

Because here’s what I’ve found: if you write your 3-1-3 consistently, the mess starts to clear. Not all at once. But week by week, you chip away at it.

So that’s my encouragement for you this week — write your 3-1-3, even if you don’t want to. Even if it’s messy. Even if you’re unclear about where you are or what you should be working on.

It’s simple:

[3] Three wins from last week — what feels like progress?
[1] One objective — what’s the single most important thing for next week?
[3] Three tasks — what are you going to do to move that objective forward?

That’s it. That’s your 3-1-3. Write it anyway.

🗣️ 👀

Chris.