Lean Canvas Business Model: What It Is + How to Create One
A successful business year doesn’t happen by chance. It’s the result of focused planning and disciplined execution.
Ambitious goals and good intentions alone won’t get you there. You need a clear strategic vision and a structured process to turn it into action across every team, department and budget line.
According to the Cascade State of Strategy report, 70% of leaders admit they struggle to execute their strategies effectively. That’s the gap that an Annual Operating Plan (AOP) is built to close.
Think of your AOP as it a company execution roadmap—one that translates strategy into tangible results over the next 12 months.
A well-designed AOP helps you focus on what moves the needle, stay agile when things change, and make the best use of your resources.
In this guide, I'll walk through exactly how to create an Annual Operating Plan that drives results. You’ll get tips on what to include, mistakes to avoid, plus real-life examples and templates to kickstart your planning.
An Annual Operating Plan (AOP) is a comprehensive plan that breaks down your company’s high-level vision into specific objectives, financial targets and action plans for the upcoming fiscal year.
Essentially, it answers the question: “What exactly will we do this year to move closer to our long-term vision?”.
The AOP is both a roadmap and a management tool that helps leadership to monitor performance, make informed decisions and adjust course when necessary. While it’s created annually, you'll need to revisit it quarterly or monthly to track progress and make necessary adjustments as conditions change.
If you’re wondering why a full-scale AOP makes sense for your company and what trade-offs you should prepare for, check out these pros and cons:
While all three are essential for running a business, they each serve a different purpose. Here’s a snapshot of the differences:
| Aspect | Strategic Plan | Annual Operating Plan (AOP) | Budget |
| Purpose | Defines long-term direction and vision | Converts strategy into concrete goals and execution plans for the year | Allocates financial resources to support those plans |
| Focus | Vision, market positioning, 3–5 year priorities | 12-month goals, initiatives, KPIs, timelines, accountability | Forecasts for revenue, expenses, investments, and headcount over the fiscal year |
| Timeframe | 3–5 years | 1 year (with regular checkpoints) | 1 year (often broken down by quarter or month) |
| Audience | Executives, board, investors | Department heads, managers, cross-functional teams | Finance team, department leaders, senior management |
To create an effective AOP, you need a clear picture of what a complete AOP includes. These are the key sections that bring clarity, structure and alignment to your plan.
Use it to provide a concise summary of the most important elements. The executive summary is typically the last thing you write but the first thing stakeholders read. It should answer:
If you’re presenting the plan to leadership or the board, this section is your hook so keep it tight, strategic and non-technical.
For instance, the executive summary below outlines the purpose of the plan and goals, such as building a high-performing, inclusive and agile workforce. It then gives an overview of the major initiatives or solutions such as talent acquisition, employee engagement, learning and development and more.
Before setting new objectives, you need to understand where your business currently stands. A SWOT analysis helps you do just that by surfacing key internal and external factors:
Your SWOT should draw from the previous year’s performance and any fresh market intelligence.
This section defines the specific outcomes your company wants to achieve this year.
They should be aligned with long-term strategy and written in a way that makes them easy to act on.
Use the SMART framework (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-bound) to ensure that your goals are focused and realistic.
Next, set clear KPIs to measure performance.
Sales could have KPIs like revenue target, average deal size, sales growth rate and more.
Marketing on the hand could be tracking Marketing-qualified leads, content performance, campaign ROI and more.
Make sure each one is directly tied to your objectives, regularly reviewed and easy for your team to understand and track.
Here’s where strategy meets execution. The operational plan lays out the initiatives, timelines and responsibilities that will drive your annual goals forward.
You should outline what each department will be doing from marketing campaigns and product releases to IT upgrades and customer success initiatives. Make sure that this section is specific and actionable, as most teams will reference it most frequently.
Here’s a great example of how to write the operation plans for each department.
This part answers the question: Do we have the people and tools to get the job done?
It covers hiring plans, tech stack improvements, vendor needs and other investments required to execute the plan.
Clarify who’s responsible, accountable, consulted and informed, so nothing falls through the cracks.
Check out this strong example of how to structure your resource allocation.
After all the planning, execution depends on regular monitoring and oversight. This section explains how you’ll track progress, flag risks early and adjust the plan if needed.
Set a cadence, monthly, quarterly or tied to team reviews and define who’s in charge of tracking KPIs, checking budget vs actuals and updating stakeholders.
Take a look at how the reporting and governance section is structured in this template.
You can choose to add a section that details expected revenue, cost breakdowns and profitability forecasts.
Segment revenue projections by business unit, geography or product line based on your internal structure. Forecasts should be realistic and flexible. Incorporating scenario planning, best-case, worst-case and most likely projections can help prepare your teams for uncertainty.
The best way to grasp how an AOP works is to see it in action.
The real-world examples below show how organizations turn strategy into focused, executable plans.
The UHSx 2023–24 annual operating plan is a strong example of how to turn long-term strategy into focused, year-long priorities. It’s built around the Trust’s “True North” vision, covering five themes:
Each theme includes measurable goals, such as achieving a 95% patient experience score or boosting staff engagement. They also added “breakthrough objectives” that focus on priority improvements, making the strategy concrete and actionable.
The plan highlights major projects and initiatives, such as the community diagnostic centers and the Louisa Martindale Building, which are action points tied to their vision and values.
Financially, the plan outlines income, spending and aims for £62 million in efficiency savings. That said, it doesn’t provide a clear total capital spend, which would help round out the financial picture.
Risk management is also covered, with a table showing key issues like workforce shortages and capacity pressures, along with their potential impact and proposed mitigation steps.
Finally, the design is noteworthy. The layout is clean, with well-spaced sections, infographics and maps showing hospital and community sites. This visual clarity makes the plan easy to follow and makes it a good reference for a complex operational document that isn’t overwhelming.
Source: Australian Wool Innovation (AWI)
AWI is a not-for-profit company owned by Australian wool growers. Their 2024–25 AOP is the perfect example of detailed and visually engaging planning. It doesn’t just build on their 2022–25 Strategic Plan, it also ties into the industry-wide vision of Wool 2030. This shows alignment from the company level up to the national strategy.
Each major program, from sheep production to industry development, comes with a table outlining investment focus, performance targets and measurement criteria. It’s clear what they’re trying to do and how they’ll track success.
Another thing that stands out is the financial transparency. The budget section opens with a clean summary: $57.5 million in revenue against $60.8 million in projected spend, with breakdowns like $8.9 million going into sheep production. What I especially liked was how they introduced this upfront using pie charts that make the financials easy to digest, followed by a detailed table further down that dives into the details.
Their measurement and evaluation framework deserves special mention as well. It’s presented as a circular flowchart, so anyone reading it can quickly understand how they track performance.
To help you create your AOP with ease, Visme has a wide range of fully customizable templates you can use as a starting point for your design.
You can use the templates below as is or customize, edit and add sections so that it’s suited to your specific product, service or project.
Whether you’re a strategy lead or CEO preparing for the year ahead, this template offers a structured format to map out your company’s direction and execution path.
It begins with an executive summary and strategic objectives, then breaks down into core sections like departmental goals, action plans, timelines, KPIs and governance structures.
The template features a modern design with a gradient purple palette and minimalist icons and visuals that make it super engaging.
Easily personalize this template with your company’s colors and fonts using our AI Brand Wizard. Just input your website URL and the tool will automatically extract your brand assets and save them in your brand kit. Also, it saves you time by suggesting beautiful templates that match your branding.
Planning your organization’s finances is a crucial part of your overall company’s strategy. Leadership needs to understand where money will be allocated, how spending aligns with business goals and what returns to expect.
Create a structured and visually compelling plan with this template. From executive summary to financial objectives and action plans, the template covers every crucial aspect.
The bold design, icons and clear headings make the plan simple to digest. To avoid cluttering your documents with text, add a link to detailed expense breakdowns or previous revenue trends.
If you're presenting your departmental annual operating plans to stakeholders, a generic, cookie-cutter proposal template won’t cut it. Impress them with this polished, professional template.
This plan has everything you need to explain your strategy, including your strategic objectives, departmental goals, action plans and more.
The clean layout, blended with stunning visuals, vivid colors and icons makes this design a head-turner. When you’re ready to share your AOP, you can download it as a PDF, send it as a digital document or even as an image file.
You need this type of plan if your organization is scaling, managing or developing your workforce.
The template is thoughtfully crafted with a clean, structured and well-organized layout that allows you to clearly outline your project overview, objectives, milestones, market potential, call to action and other essential project details.
It comes with visually appealing images, colors and icons that help emphasize key points and data. Easily customize it with your brand colors, logo and other elements.
Looking for a clean, professional approach to present your annual go-to-market strategy to stakeholders? This template has got you covered. The design includes dedicated spaces for project goals, milestones and budgets.
With a clean color palette, creative icons and plenty of white space, stakeholders can quickly grasp the key concepts and details of your strategy.
If you’re customizing this plan for multiple clients, you don’t need to rewrite everything from scratch. Add dynamic fields to specific text boxes and auto-populate information like names, dates and project information with a single client—no manual replacement is required.
Before jumping into the process, take time to set up a clear structure.
Start your AOP planning at least three to four months ahead. Rushing it in a few weeks rarely works. There are too many moving parts: input from the board, leadership and multiple departments.
First, map out major checkpoints like strategy workshops, cross-functional planning and leadership reviews. Then, clarify who owns each part of the process and turn it into a basic project plan with timelines and task owners.
With the structure in place, let’s dive into how to actually build your AOP.
Before planning ahead, take an honest look at how the company performed over the past year. This step helps you review what went wrong, build on what worked and set targets that are achievable.
Start by gathering key performance data: revenue, expenses, customer metrics and relevant KPIs. Then compare actual results to last year’s targets or forecasts. Ask the team four questions:
In the words of Nikita Sherbina, Co-Founder & CEO at AIScreen
"When building our annual operating plan at AIScreen, one step we never skip is a reverse debrief with department heads — asking not just what worked last year, but what they’d never do again. It surfaces blockers early and forces alignment before we start forecasting."
For instance, in this annual plan by AWI, the CEO starts with a brief introduction where he gives an overview of how the company performed and challenges in the previous year.
Source: Australian Wool Innovation (AWI)
When you’re done with that analysis, run a quick SWOT analysis to assess your position in the market:
This step will reinforce your initial assessment of the previous year and help you uncover opportunities and gaps you need to work on in the year ahead.
Here’s how AWI presents its SWOT analysis.
Source: Australian Wool Innovation (AWI)
The next step is to reconnect with your company’s long-term strategic goals.
Strategic goals typically span three to five years and are guided by your company’s mission, market position and competitive landscape.
Reassessing them at the start of your planning process helps confirm whether they’re still relevant, especially in light of last year’s performance and the current business environment.
In United Hospital Sussex’s Annual plan, they referenced their strategic goals and presented them like this:
Start by reviewing the priorities already in place. Ask key questions like:
If the answers point to change, this is the moment to recalibrate your strategic direction before locking in annual targets.
You can’t do this alone. Involve the executive team in a focused discussion or workshop. These conversations can reveal valuable insights on where strategic energy should shift in the year ahead.
Dimi Baitan, CEO & Co-Founder of Brizy.io, emphasized this below:
“Before setting any annual targets, revisit your 3–5 year strategy. Is your current trajectory still aligned with where you want to go? If your vision has shifted, even slightly, your annual plan should reflect that. Think of it like recalibrating your GPS: if your destination changes, so should your route.”
With your strategic goals clarified, it’s time to turn that long-term vision into specific, measurable outcomes for the year ahead.
This is where your Annual Operating Plan starts to take shape.
The goal here isn’t to list everything the company could do but to focus on the few outcomes that will drive the most impact in the next year.
Start by translating multi-year goals into near-term targets.
For example, if your 3-year goal is to double revenue, what’s a realistic revenue growth target for the year? If you want to expand into new markets, which one will you enter first? If you’re building a new product line, what’s the milestone for the year?
Your aim should be to define three to five core objectives. Each one should be meaningful, achievable and clearly tied to your strategic direction.
Andrew Lokenauth, a business executive and owner of Thefinancenewsletter.com shares the same perspective:
“I'm a big believer in setting fewer, bigger goals. In my Wall Street days, I watched too many companies spread themselves thin with 20+ priorities. Now I push my clients to pick 3-5 major moves that'll really move the needle. A software client of mine picked just two goals: launching their enterprise product ($2M target) & reducing customer churn by 25%. Simple — but it gave everyone crystal clear direction.”
Next, make each objective actionable by attaching Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). If your goal is to increase brand awareness. Your KPI might include website traffic, branded search volume or engagement on key social channels.
It’s also important to involve stakeholders in the process. Hold a focused brainstorming session to align on priorities, then distill the outcome into a one-pager that summarizes your company-wide objectives and their corresponding KPIs.
Here’s an example of how AWI presented this section in their annual plan.
Source: Australian Wool Innovation (AWI)
Here comes the moment of truth: building the operational plan.
Avoid the common mistake of running this process top-down. Instead of leadership dictating every move, ask teams to translate company-wide objectives into concrete initiatives they’ll own.
When departments define their own plans within the strategic framework, alignment becomes much more natural and they’re far more likely to stay on track.
Gianluca Ferruggia, General Manager of DesignRush works with this strategy:
At DesignRush, developing the annual operating plan is a cooperative process that combines input from cross-functional teams at the bottom with top-down strategic goals.
Before departments begin planning, set the stage. Share a clear summary of what the company aims to achieve this year, including:
Then, meet with teams to explain the “why” behind these priorities. If one objective is to reduce churn by 20%, walk them through the impact that would have on revenue, retention and growth. Giving context helps teams see beyond their day-to-day tasks and understand how their work ties into the bigger picture.
Now, ask each team (Marketing, Sales, Product, Customer Success, HR, etc.) to return with a concise action plan. Their plans should outline:
To avoid scattered, messy inputs, provide a simple planning template. This can be a shared Google Doc or spreadsheet with structured fields like:
Objective → Initiative → KPI → Risks → Timeline →Owner → Budget Estimate
For example, if the company's goal is to expand into a new region:
These department-level inputs become the building blocks of your complete AOP.
In AWI’s case, one of their marketing strategies focused on sustainability. So they outlined a clear approach for tackling it and identified the specific KPIs they would use to measure progress.
Adam Bushell, the Director at AB Electrical & Communications shares a practical insight into how they engage departments for this phase:
“During these sessions, we use a simple framework. Each team proposes three to five specific, measurable objectives for the upcoming year that align with our overarching company goals, such as increasing solar installation capacity by 15 percent or improving customer service response times by one hour. They also outline the resources, whether it is an additional ten thousand dollars for specialized tools or forty hours of specific training per technician, they believe are necessary to achieve those objectives.
"This bottom-up input is invaluable. It provides highly accurate estimates of required resources, flags potential operational challenges early and, most importantly, instills a deep sense of ownership within each team. When our lead electrician helps define the target for reducing project completion time by half a day, they are far more committed to achieving it than if that target was simply imposed from above". says Adam.
A plan without numbers behind it is just a wish list. Allocating financial resources ensures your AOP becomes a reality.
Start with revenue forecasting. Estimate how much you expect to earn over the next 12 months, breaking it down by product lines, customer segments or regions, whatever best fits your business model.
Dimi also suggests building scenarios when creating forecasts. In his words:
“Don't just build a budget, try building scenarios. Make sure you plan for best-case, realistic and lean versions of your forecast. Forecasts shouldn’t be static; they should flex with market conditions, team bandwidth or new opportunities.”
Next, turn to expenses. Capture both fixed and variable costs: salaries, software, vendor fees, marketing spend and larger investments like a system upgrade or office relocation.
Review each department’s submitted action plan to estimate expenses accurately. For example, if HR is planning to hire five new roles, factor in salaries, onboarding and tools.
If you’re launching a new product, allocate a budget for quality checks and deployment.
This is also where figuring out resource allocation can get tricky. You may notice that projected expenses exceed your revenue forecast, or that two teams are requesting funding for similar projects.
That’s where prioritization becomes critical. What initiatives are crucial for hitting your overall company goals? Which ones can wait or be scaled back? Making these choices will help keep the plan financially on track.
George Chasiotis, Co-Founder of Restartt shared a useful insight based on his experience:
“We treat budgeting like a product roadmap; you can’t fund everything, so you choose what to bet on. Instead of just assigning static numbers, we layer budgets by confidence level: high-certainty spend and experimental spend, like new campaigns, hires and pilots. This makes it easier to pivot mid-year. Also, we tie each line item to a specific output metric, so every dollar has a job and we can adjust based on performance, not gut feel.”
Once everything has been reviewed and aligned, you should end up with a comprehensive AOP budget that clearly outlines the following:
This financial backbone gives your AOP credibility and ensures your strategic ambitions are matched by real, executable plans.
Source: Australian Wool Innovation (AWI)
Before you start documenting your AOP, gather all the teams involved in the planning process for an alignment meeting. Use this time to review the inputs as a group and make sure everything fits together. That way, when you begin writing, the plan is already solid and clear.
Here’s how George handles this phase:
“Once plans are in draft, we run what we call a “friction audit.” We look for where departments' plans might conflict, for example, marketing plans a big product push in Q2, but engineering can’t deliver until Q3. Rather than wait for those misalignments to cause chaos later, we address them in planning. Also, we make sure every goal connects to 1–2 company-level objectives. If it doesn’t roll up to the bigger vision, it’s either cut or reframed. That alignment is what keeps the team focused when things get messy mid-year.”
Visme’s collaboration tool makes this alignment phase easy. You can invite leaders or execs to review, leave comments or edit sections directly.
You can also assign specific parts of the document to different contributors using Visme’s workflow tools. No more messy email threads or version control issues.
AI can speed up your AOP workflow from days to hours. Whether you’re analyzing past performance or drafting new documentation, smart tools like ChatGPT and Visme can help you move faster without sacrificing quality. Here’s how:
You can use ChatGPT to quickly review your past-year data—sales, marketing performance, budget reports, internal reviews and extract insights that inform this year’s plan. AI can help you:
Here are a few prompt examples:
Once you’ve gathered your strategy notes, department inputs and past-year analysis, it’s time to turn them into a compelling AOP document. Instead of designing it from scratch, Visme AI can build a polished draft in minutes.
Here’s how:
Example prompt:
“Create a branded Annual Operating Plan with an executive summary, strategic goals, KPIs, department initiatives and a budget overview. Use a clean layout with timeline visuals and KPI charts.”
Next, choose your visual style: corporate, minimal, creative, etc. and let Visme generate a complete draft. You can then:
With your AOP documented and refined, the final step is to present it to the executive team or board for formal approval. This goal is not to show off your plan but to secure buy-in, address concerns and confirm alignment across leadership.
Your presentation should guide stakeholders through the plan in a way that feels strategic, structured and easy to follow. Balance high-level context with just enough detail to show the plan is grounded in real numbers and clear goals.
To hold their attention, presentation design matters. Visme offers ready-to-use AOP slide templates that help you bring the story to life. If you want something custom, our AI presentation maker lets you generate a polished, branded slide deck in seconds. Just enter your prompt and let the tool do the rest.
Even the best strategies can fall flat without the right execution. Here are some key best practices to follow and common mistakes to steer clear of when building your Annual Operating Plan.
Lisa Richards, the CEO and Creator of the Candida Diet, shared this about how their team manages change within their AOP:
"We have an annual operating plan (AOP) that acts as a strategic compass. What many businesses overlook is building in 'flex triggers' – predefined situations that provide for nimble course correction without compromising the entire plan. We saw a 37% spike in gut-health products after the 2023 post-antibiotic boom, so we now plan and invest in contingency budgets and inventory plans accordingly for such events. The magic is in our quarterly 'reality check' meetings where we compare our projections with actuals and adjust; this allowed us to hit 92% of our revenue target last year even with all the supply chain hiccups.”
The difference between a business plan and an AOP is that a business plan outlines long-term goals and strategy, while an AOP focuses on short-term execution, detailing what needs to happen this year to stay on track.
The responsibility for creating the AOP falls on leadership, but it’s a cross-functional effort. Department heads, finance and strategy teams all play key roles in shaping and contributing to the final plan.
An AOP should be reviewed at least quarterly. Regular check-ins help you adapt to new data, changing priorities or market shifts to keep the plan relevant throughout the year.
AOP is important in finance because it connects strategy to budgets, forecasts and spending decisions. It ensures resources are aligned with goals and helps track financial performance throughout the year.
To communicate an AOP to stakeholders, use a visual, easy-to-digest summary that highlights key goals, initiatives and KPIs. Present it in leadership meetings and make it accessible via a shared dashboard or PDF.
An AOP connects your strategy to execution and shows leadership exactly how each part of the business contributes to growth. But bringing it all to life shouldn’t be time-consuming and stressful.
With Visme, you can turn raw strategy into visually engaging, board-ready AOPs in minutes. Create branded templates, design clean dashboards and showcase initiatives, budgets and timelines with charts, visuals and interactivity that make your plan easier to present, share and follow through on.
If you want to stop scrambling through disjointed operation reports and last-minute formatting chaos. Visme gives you one clean workspace to plan, design and deliver your AOP like a pro.
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