Build momentum for Q2 FY27
Strategy & execution / Q2 FY27
Build momentum
for Q2 FY27.
Why your next 90-day plan starts now.
From direction to daily action.A rhythm that keeps your priorities moving.
3-5 YEARSStrategy
FY27Annual plan
Q2 FY2790-day plan
MONTHLYMilestones
WEEKLYCommitments
DAILYAction
As September draws to a close, now is the time to prepare your 90-day plan for Q2 FY27: October to December 2026.
This quarter takes your business to the halfway point of the financial year. The priorities you choose now will influence both your December position and the platform you take into January.
There is also a practical reality. Customer deadlines, Christmas trading, staff leave and shutdown periods can compress the time available. Waiting until October is well underway makes it easier for immediate demands to take control.
But completing the plan is only the beginning.
The real value of 90-day planning is the momentum it creates through consistent action.
That momentum comes from connecting your longer-term direction to clear quarterly outcomes, then keeping those outcomes alive through monthly reviews, weekly commitments and daily priorities.
Start with the bigger picture
Your quarterly plan should sit within a clear planning structure.
Ideally, you already have a strategic plan that sets your direction for the next three to five years. You should also have an Annual Operating Plan for FY27 that translates that direction into the outcomes required by 30 June 2027.
The connection is straightforward:
- Strategic plan: Where do we want the business to be in three to five years?
- Annual Operating Plan: What must we achieve this financial year to move towards that future?
- 90-day plan: What must we achieve this quarter to keep the annual plan moving?
Each level makes the next one more focused.
Suppose your three-year ambition is to build a business that operates successfully without your involvement in every decision. Your annual plan might include developing managers, clarifying responsibilities and improving operating systems.
Your Q2 plan then identifies the next practical steps: delegate specific decisions, introduce a management reporting rhythm and document two critical processes.
Now the quarter has a purpose that everyone can understand.
If your annual plan needs attention, address that first. Our Annual Operating Planning video and template provide a practical starting point.
Use Q1 to make better Q2 decisions
Before deciding what comes next, take an honest look at the quarter just completed.
Where have you made progress? Which commitments remain unfinished? What have you learnt about your customers, your team and your own capacity?
Look beyond whether tasks were completed. Consider whether the work produced the intended result.
You might have launched a marketing campaign without generating enough qualified enquiries. You might have recruited a manager while still retaining every important decision yourself.
Activity and outcomes need separate attention.
Ask your team:
- What moved our annual priorities forward?
- What stalled and why?
- Which assumptions proved inaccurate?
- What should we continue, change or stop?
- What unfinished work still deserves a place in Q2?
Avoid automatically carrying every incomplete action into the next quarter. Some work needs renewed commitment. Other work needs redesigning or removing.
An effective review improves the quality of your next decisions. It also gives the team an opportunity to recognise progress before moving on.
Choose a few outcomes that matter
A useful 90-day plan gives people a manageable set of priorities.
For many businesses, three major priorities are a sensible starting point. The right number depends on the scope of the work and the capacity available alongside normal operations.
These priorities are your Big Rocks: the outcomes that deserve protected attention because they materially advance the annual plan.
Be specific about what success means.
“Improve sales” gives the team little direction. “Introduce a consistent enquiry follow-up process and lift quote conversion from 25% to 30% by quarter end” creates a clearer target.
“Develop the team” is broad. “Train two supervisors to run weekly production meetings independently by 30 November” makes the expected change visible.
For each priority, define:
- The outcome required.
- How you will measure success.
- One person accountable for delivery.
- The key milestones and deadlines.
- The time, support and resources needed.
Our 90-day planning video and instructions and editable 90-day plan template can help you structure this work.
Download the editable 90-day planning template ↗
Plan for the quarter you actually have
October to December deserves a realistic capacity check.
A project that appears achievable across three months may become difficult once you account for leave, customer commitments, peak trading and supplier availability.
Put those constraints into the calendar before committing to deadlines.
If a key manager is away in December, their major implementation work may need to finish in November. If your business faces a Christmas rush, improvements intended to support that rush need to be operating beforehand.
Also consider dependencies. A new reporting process may require better data first. Delegating decisions may require training before responsibility can transfer.
Sequence the work so each step prepares the next.
Leave room for normal business demands and unexpected issues. A plan that consumes every available hour becomes fragile as soon as circumstances change.
Credible commitments help build trust. Repeated overcommitment makes planning feel disconnected from reality.
Build momentum through a regular cadence
Once the plan is agreed, establish the rhythm that will keep it moving.
Cadence is the regular pattern of planning, action and review that builds momentum.
It gives people repeated opportunities to make progress, see results and adjust their approach.
When a priority comes up every week, obstacles become visible sooner. When someone completes a milestone, the team sees evidence that the plan is working. When circumstances change, you can respond while there is still time to influence the result.
Over time, those small cycles strengthen confidence and follow-through.
The 90-day plan provides the overall framework. Monthly, weekly and daily routines turn it into a working system.
Monthly: check progress towards the outcome
At the start of each month, identify what needs to be achieved by month end to keep the quarter on track.
Review results against the quarterly measures. Check milestones, resources and emerging problems.
Ask: “Given where we are today, what needs our attention this month?”
For example, a Q2 priority to improve customer retention might involve reviewing lost accounts in October, testing a follow-up process in November and evaluating the results in December.
Each month advances the same outcome.
Weekly: turn priorities into commitments
Your weekly review connects the plan to immediate action.
Keep the conversation focused:
- What did we commit to last week?
- What was completed?
- What is getting in the way?
- What must happen this week?
- Who needs help or a decision?
Be clear about the next deliverable and its owner.
“Work on the customer process” is difficult to assess. “Complete the draft follow-up checklist and test it with three accounts by Friday” creates a useful commitment.
Use the meeting to resolve obstacles as well as report progress.
Daily: protect time for important work
Daily planning is where personal productivity supports business execution.
Before opening your inbox and responding to everyone else’s priorities, identify the work that will advance your weekly commitments.
Choose a small number of must-do actions. Allocate time for them in your calendar.
You still need to handle customers, operational issues and unexpected demands. However, important work needs a deliberate place in the day.
A protected hour spent improving a critical process can create more lasting value than a day filled entirely with reactive tasks.
Connect your business plan to your personal productivity
Every business priority eventually becomes someone’s responsibility.
For owners and leaders, this creates a practical challenge: how do you keep strategic commitments visible while managing a busy working day?
The connection needs to run all the way through:
Annual priorities → quarterly outcomes → monthly milestones → weekly commitments → daily actions.
Our Focused Execution 90-Day Productivity and Planning Journal supports this process by connecting your 90-day plan with monthly, weekly and daily priorities.
One practical daily companion.The October to December 2026 journal connects your 90-day priorities with monthly, weekly and daily action.
Explore the 90-Day Productivity Planner ↗
Use it as part of your working routine. Keep your priorities visible, schedule the next actions and review what you actually completed.
The journal provides structure. Consistent use turns that structure into a habit.
You can also use our planning and productivity videos for guidance on cascading plans, weekly planning, daily planning and time blocking.
Put the rhythm in place now
Before Q2 begins, book the planning session and schedule the reviews that will support delivery.
Bring your strategic direction, FY27 Annual Operating Plan and Q1 results into the discussion. Agree on the few outcomes that matter most by December. Assign ownership and check that the commitments fit your available capacity.
Then make sure everyone knows what happens in the first week.
Momentum starts with a clear next action. It grows when that action is completed, reviewed and followed by another.
By December, you want to see meaningful progress on the priorities that will shape your business. That requires attention throughout the quarter.
Build your Q2 plan now. Give it a place in your monthly conversations, weekly commitments and daily decisions.
The plan sets the direction.
The cadence builds the momentum.
The cadence builds the momentum.
What are you tolerating? The leadership question that changes everything.
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What are you
Leadership
What are you
tolerating?
The leadership question that changes everything.
Every business has frustrations. Missed deadlines. Unclear communication. Recurring customer complaints. Processes that require more effort than they should.
Most leaders can identify these problems quickly. The harder question is why they keep happening.
Sometimes the answer is uncomfortable: we have become used to them.
We work around the issue, explain it away or promise to address it when things settle down. Gradually, something that once frustrated us becomes an accepted part of running the business.
That is why one simple question deserves a place in every leader’s thinking:
Pause and consider
What am I tolerating today that I shouldn’t be accepting tomorrow?
It shifts attention towards the standards we set, the systems we maintain and the problems we allow to continue.
What you accept becomes the standard
Your team learns what matters by watching what happens each day.
If deadlines regularly slip without discussion, people may begin to treat them as optional. If recurring quality issues attract little attention, fixing them becomes less urgent. If meetings consistently start late, punctuality loses its value.
Written expectations still matter. Their credibility depends on what leaders consistently model and reinforce.
This applies to your own behaviour too. Are you clear about priorities? Do you follow through on commitments? Do you address difficult issues promptly?
The standard you demonstrate gives weight to the standard you expect.
Raising that standard starts with noticing where your actions and expectations have drifted apart.
How small frustrations become normal
Listen to the language people use around recurring problems:
- “That’s just the way it works.”
- “We’ve always done it like that.”
- “It’s only a small issue.”
- “We’ll fix it when we have time.”
These phrases can signal that a problem has become familiar enough to escape attention.
People are often very good at keeping work moving despite a poor process. They create another spreadsheet, add an extra check or develop a personal shortcut.
Those workarounds may help today. Over time, they can make the underlying problem harder to see.
Consider an illustrative example: a sales team regularly chases missing information before preparing quotes. Each person develops a way to fill the gaps. The quotes eventually go out, so the process appears to work.
Yet customers wait longer, staff repeat work and managers handle avoidable escalations. The team’s resourcefulness is keeping an inefficient system alive.
The leadership opportunity is to make the work easier to complete correctly.
The hidden cost of leaving things alone
Some problems are too small to appear as a separate line in your financial reports. Their combined effect can still be substantial.
Think about the time your business spends:
- Searching for information that should be easy to find.
- Entering the same details into different systems.
- Chasing decisions without a clear decision-maker.
- Repeating work because expectations were unclear.
- Attending meetings without a defined purpose.
For illustration, ten people each losing ten minutes a working day adds up to more than eight hours a week.
There is also a cost to motivation. When employees repeatedly raise an issue and nothing changes, they may stop suggesting improvements.
A recurring frustration can become a message: this is something the business is prepared to accept.
When firefighting becomes the routine
Many leaders want to improve their business. Finding time is the challenge.
A customer escalation needs attention. A staff member is away. A supplier misses a delivery. Another deadline approaches.
The immediate problem gets resolved, but its cause remains. Next week, the same issue returns in a slightly different form.
Responding well under pressure is valuable. It also helps to ask whether the pressure was preventable.
After a recurring problem, pause long enough to ask:
What needs to change so we are less likely to deal with this again?
That question connects day-to-day problem solving with longer-term improvement. It creates a reason to examine the process, clarify ownership or remove an unnecessary step.
Raise standards while making problems safe to discuss
Higher standards work best when people feel able to explain what is getting in their way.
If raising a problem leads to blame, useful information may stay hidden. Leaders then see the consequences without understanding the conditions that created them.
Start with curiosity:
- What happened?
- What made the task difficult to complete correctly?
- Were the expectations and responsibilities clear?
- What would help prevent a repeat?
This approach still leaves room for accountability. People need clear expectations and responsibility for their commitments. They also need workable processes, appropriate support and timely decisions.
Lean leadership encourages leaders to observe how work happens and involve the people doing it in improvement.
A practical starting point is to ask your team: “Where are we making good work unnecessarily difficult?”
Then listen carefully to the answer.
Five places to look in your business
You do not need to review everything at once. Start with a familiar source of frustration.
- Unclear communicationLook for tasks that require repeated clarification or rework. Are the expected outcome, owner and deadline clear?
- Inconsistent processesFind work where variation creates errors or delays. What needs a simple, agreed way of working?
- Delayed decisionsNotice where work waits for approval. Is it clear who can decide and when a decision is needed?
- Low-value meetingsReview meetings that continue out of habit. What decision, outcome or coordination do they support?
- Recurring problemsIdentify issues that return despite repeated fixes. Have you addressed the cause or only dealt with the immediate effect?
Choose one thing to improve this week
Set aside 15 minutes and consider three questions:
- What problem have I accepted because it has become familiar?
- Where is my team working around a process that needs fixing?
- If I joined this business today, what would I question first?
Choose one issue where a practical change could make a useful difference.
Discuss it with the people involved. Agree on what better looks like, assign an owner and set a review date. Check whether the change reduces the problem.
Three key takeaways
- What leaders consistently accept helps shape everyday standards.
- Small recurring frustrations can consume time and weaken motivation.
- Improvement starts by addressing one issue with clear ownership and follow-through.
Why the Same Business Problems Keep Coming Back (And How to Fix Them Permanently)
If the same problem keeps returning, you’re probably solving the symptom instead of the cause.
Every business experiences problems. Customers complain. Cashflow tightens. Staff leave. Projects run late. Margins shrink. Most leadership teams respond exactly as you would expect. They identify the issue, implement a solution and move on to the next challenge. For a while everything appears to improve. Then, a few months later, the same problem returns. It might have a slightly different appearance but it is fundamentally the same issue.
That is rarely bad luck.
It is usually a sign that the business has treated the symptom rather than addressed the underlying cause.
One of the most valuable questions any business owner can ask is not, “How do we solve this problem?” but, “What problem are we actually trying to solve?” It is a subtle change in language but it fundamentally changes the quality of the discussion. Instead of reacting to the issue in front of you, it forces you to understand why it exists in the first place. That is where meaningful improvement begins.
Most Business Problems Are Only Signals
One of the biggest misconceptions in business is that the visible problem is the real problem. In reality, most business issues are simply signals that something deeper within the organisation needs attention.
Take cashflow as an example. When cash becomes tight, many businesses immediately focus on collecting overdue invoices, extending supplier terms or increasing their overdraft. Those actions may relieve the immediate pressure but they rarely solve the underlying issue. The real cause may be poor pricing, declining margins, inefficient production, excessive inventory, weak project management or an overloaded operation that delays invoicing. Cashflow is simply where the problem eventually becomes visible.
The same pattern appears throughout almost every business. High staff turnover is often blamed on recruitment when the real issue is inconsistent leadership or a poor workplace culture. Declining sales are frequently attributed to the sales team when the real problem is an unclear value proposition or an undifferentiated offering. Customer complaints may seem to indicate poor service when they actually reveal broken internal systems, inconsistent processes or unrealistic expectations.
Symptoms are important because they tell us that something is wrong. They are rarely useful because they tell us what is wrong.
Why Intelligent Leaders Still Treat Symptoms
If identifying root causes is so important, why do so many capable business owners continue treating symptoms?
The answer is surprisingly simple. Leadership operates under pressure. Customers expect immediate answers. Employees need decisions. Suppliers want payment. Problems arrive faster than time allows for careful analysis. In that environment, taking action feels productive while investigation can feel like a luxury.
Unfortunately, speed and effectiveness are not always the same thing. A quick solution often provides immediate relief, which reinforces the belief that the problem has been solved. In reality, the underlying system remains unchanged. Eventually the symptom returns and the organisation finds itself investing more time, more money and more energy solving exactly the same issue again.
Over time this creates a culture of firefighting. Leaders become exceptionally good at responding to problems but make very little progress eliminating them. Meetings become dominated by operational issues. Teams become frustrated because familiar challenges keep resurfacing. Improvement slows because attention is continually drawn back to yesterday’s problems instead of tomorrow’s opportunities.
Think Like a Doctor, Not a Firefighter
Imagine visiting your doctor with recurring headaches.
A good doctor does not simply prescribe painkillers every time you walk through the door. They ask questions. They examine your lifestyle, medical history, stress levels and other possible contributing factors before recommending treatment. Their objective is not simply to remove the pain. Their objective is to understand why the pain exists.
Business leaders should approach problems with exactly the same discipline.
When a recurring issue appears, resist the temptation to immediately search for a solution. Instead, become curious. Ask what changed. Look for patterns. Examine the processes surrounding the issue. Challenge long-held assumptions. Sometimes the first explanation is correct. More often, it is only the beginning of the investigation.
Businesses improve far more quickly when leaders become skilled diagnosticians rather than highly efficient firefighters.
A Simple Tool That Reveals the Real Problem
One of the simplest techniques for uncovering root causes is the Five Whys. Popularised through the Toyota Production System, the technique is exactly what its name suggests. Rather than accepting the first explanation, you continue asking “Why?” until you uncover the underlying issue.
Imagine a business that regularly misses customer delivery dates.
The initial conclusion might be that production scheduling is poor. Asking why reveals that production is constantly falling behind. Asking why again shows that equipment is frequently unavailable. Another why reveals that preventative maintenance is continually postponed. Digging further uncovers that maintenance is postponed because the factory has no spare capacity to stop production. Finally, the business recognises that its real constraint is insufficient production capacity rather than poor scheduling.
Without this disciplined questioning, management might invest months refining production schedules while the underlying capacity constraint continues creating delays. The symptom changes very little because the system producing it has never been improved. This principle sits at the heart of Chapter 2, which encourages leaders to move beyond obvious explanations and identify the true source of recurring business problems.
Sustainable Improvement Comes from Better Systems
One of the defining characteristics of high-performing businesses is that they spend less time solving individual problems and more time improving the systems that create results.
Rather than continually responding to customer complaints, they redesign the customer experience. Rather than repeatedly replacing employees, they improve recruitment, onboarding and leadership capability. Rather than chasing cash every month, they strengthen pricing, forecasting and operational efficiency. Rather than blaming individuals, they examine whether the existing processes make success easy or difficult.
This approach requires patience because improving systems usually takes longer than implementing quick fixes. It also produces significantly better outcomes because well-designed systems continue delivering results long after the original problem has disappeared.
As the saying goes, every system is perfectly designed to produce the results it currently delivers. If the results are disappointing, the first place to look is the system itself.
Five Questions Worth Asking
The next time a recurring issue appears in your business, pause before discussing solutions and ask a different set of questions.
1. What problem are we actually trying to solve?
2. Have we experienced this issue before?
3. What evidence suggests this is a symptom rather than the underlying cause?
4. Which business system allowed this issue to occur?
5. If we solved the underlying cause, would this problem disappear permanently?
Those questions may take longer to answer than implementing another quick fix but they often prevent years of repeated frustration.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is a root cause?
A root cause is the underlying reason a problem exists. Removing the root cause reduces the likelihood of the problem recurring because it addresses the source rather than the symptom.
What are the Five Whys?
The Five Whys is a structured questioning technique that repeatedly asks “Why?” until the underlying cause of a problem becomes clear. It is a simple but highly effective way of improving business problem solving and is discussed in Chapter 2 of The Questions You’re Not Asking.
Why do the same business problems keep returning?
Recurring problems usually indicate that the underlying process, system or behaviour has not changed. Temporary solutions may remove the immediate symptom but they rarely prevent it from returning.
Can every business problem be traced to a single cause?
Not always. Many business issues have several contributing factors. The objective is not to find one perfect answer but to identify the few underlying causes that will have the greatest impact if addressed.
The Better Question
Business owners are paid to make decisions but great leaders know that good decisions begin with good questions.
The next time your leadership team encounters a recurring challenge, resist the temptation to jump straight to solutions. Slow the conversation down. Challenge the obvious explanation. Keep asking why until the discussion shifts from symptoms to systems.
The quality of your business will rarely exceed the quality of the questions your leadership team is prepared to ask.
Ready to Solve Problems Permanently?
Chapter 2 of The Questions You’re Not Asking explores practical techniques for identifying root causes, improving decision making and solving problems that matter rather than simply treating the symptoms. If your leadership team feels like it is having the same conversations every quarter, the answer may not be better solutions. It may be better questions.
Explore The Questions You’re Not Asking About Your Business → https://amzn.asia/d/0a8fUXkU
Most business problems don’t appear suddenly.They build quietly while leaders stay busy reacting. In this practical and thought-provoking book, business coach Russell Cummings reveals the hidden questions many business owners avoid until it’s too late.
Drawing on four decades of experience across hundreds of businesses, Russell explores the real issues behind growth, leadership, culture, profitability, productivity, strategy, and resilience.
AI Habit: How to Use ChatGPT Voice Recording to Capture Ideas, Explore Opportunities and Think More Clearly
One of the biggest challenges facing business owners and managers is not a lack of ideas. It is finding enough uninterrupted time to think properly about those ideas before the next operational issue takes over.
Most working days are filled with meetings, emails, staff questions, customer demands and decisions that need to be made quickly. Somewhere in the middle of all that activity, an important thought appears. You might see a solution to a long-standing problem, recognise a new commercial opportunity or suddenly understand what needs to happen next. Unfortunately, those moments of clarity often arrive when you are nowhere near your desk.
Some of my best thinking happens while I am driving home from a client meeting, walking between appointments or reflecting after a strategy discussion. The problem is that by the time I get back to the office, another issue has taken priority and much of that thinking has disappeared.
For years, I relied on notebooks, emails to myself and voice memos. They captured fragments of information, but they rarely helped me organise the full train of thought. More often than not, they became another collection of notes that I planned to revisit but never did.
I now use a much simpler process. I open ChatGPT on my phone, navigate to the right chat, tell it what I am about to do, ask Siri to set a nine-minute timer and then think out loud. I do not try to structure the conversation or turn it into a polished explanation. I simply talk through the issue, idea or opportunity in the same way I would with a trusted adviser in a stream of consciousness flow. I let the ideas and comments come in whatever order they appear.
When the session is complete, ChatGPT organises everything I have said into a concise summary, identifies the key insights and highlights any actions that logically drop out of the update. It is one of the simplest ways I use AI, but it is also one of the most useful because it helps me capture and organise my thinking before it is lost.
Why use ChatGPT voice recording as a thinking tool?
Many people still think of ChatGPT mainly as a writing assistant. It is certainly useful for drafting emails, proposals, reports and marketing content, but that is only one part of its value. Used well, ChatGPT can also act as a practical thinking partner.
Most business owners do not think in perfectly structured paragraphs. We work through ideas by talking, testing assumptions, revisiting earlier points and following the conversation wherever it leads. If you have ever started explaining a problem to someone and realised halfway through that you already knew the answer, you have experienced the value of thinking out loud.
Talking helps you connect ideas and clarify what really matters. It can also surface assumptions, concerns and possibilities that are difficult to identify when you are staring at a blank page. The challenge is capturing the complete conversation and turning it into something useful once the thinking is finished.
That is where ChatGPT helps. It can remove repetition, group similar ideas, identify recurring themes and convert an unstructured stream of thought into a practical summary. The ideas, experience and commercial judgement still come from you. AI simply helps organise the material so you can review it more clearly and move towards action.
This is an important distinction. The purpose of the exercise is not to outsource your thinking. It is to make better use of the thinking you are already doing.
My five-step ChatGPT Thinking Session
I have deliberately kept this process simple because a complicated workflow is unlikely to become a regular habit. The whole setup takes less than a minute and can be used whenever you need to work through a problem, explore an opportunity or capture ideas while they are still fresh. I will refer to ChatGPT but you can use your AI platform of choice eg. Claude, Copilot, Gemini, etc
Step 1: Open ChatGPT and navigate to the right chat
Open the ChatGPT app on your phone and go to the conversation where you want to capture your thinking. You can use a normal chat, although I recommend creating a dedicated ChatGPT Project if you expect to use this approach regularly.
Keeping related Thinking Sessions together makes it easier to revisit earlier discussions, compare how your thinking has changed and build a useful record of decisions, ideas and opportunities. You might create Projects called Weekly Thinking Sessions, Business Strategy, Leadership Journal, Blue-Sky Ideas, New Product Development or Business Opportunities.
The name is not particularly important. The benefit comes from keeping related conversations together rather than allowing them to become scattered across dozens of unrelated chats.
Step 2: Set up the task
Before you start recording, tell ChatGPT what you are about to do and how you want it to manage the session. Explain that you will be thinking out loud, that your thoughts may be unstructured or repetitive, and that you may send several voice recordings on the same topic.
You should also tell ChatGPT not to analyse the information after every recording. Instead, it should simply acknowledge each part and wait until you say the full session is complete. This is particularly important when you are exploring a complex topic because you do not want the AI reacting to an incomplete version of your thinking.
I have included the full compound Thinking Session Prompt at the end of this article. It sets up both the data collection process and the final analysis before you begin, so you only need to give the instructions once. Copy and paste this into your AI platform of choice.
Step 3: Ask Siri to set a nine-minute timer
Before I press the microphone button, I say:
“Hey Siri, set a timer for nine minutes.”
I use nine minutes because the voice recording limit I work to in ChatGPT is around ten minutes. The nine-minute timer gives me a buffer, which means I do not have to watch the clock or worry that the recording will finish before I complete an important point. Obviously, you can do this on Android devices with a similar command. Check the recording length on your AI of choice – ChatGPt is currently about 10 minutes.
ChatGPT features and limits can change between versions, devices and plans, so it is worth checking the current limit in the version you are using. The practical principle remains the same: set the timer slightly below the recording limit so you can focus on the topic rather than the technology.
This small step makes the process much easier. Once the timer starts, I can give the conversation my full attention.
Step 4: Think out loud
Press the microphone button and start talking. Do not try to sound polished, organise every idea or create a logical structure before you begin. This is not a presentation, and you are not preparing formal meeting notes. It is simply a chance to work through the topic while your thinking is fresh.
Talk as though you are sitting with a trusted adviser. Explain the background, what you are trying to achieve, what concerns you, what opportunities you can see and what options you are considering. It is fine to repeat yourself, change direction or realise halfway through that your original view was wrong. That is how genuine thinking often works.
You might use the process for weekly planning, a difficult leadership issue, a client debrief, a sales opportunity or an important decision. It is also particularly useful when the topic is less defined and you want to explore possibilities rather than solve an immediate problem.
Examples include:
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Blue-sky thinking about the future of the business
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New product development
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New service concepts
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Market and growth opportunities
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Partnership opportunities
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New customer segments
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Alternative business models
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Improvements to an existing product or service
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Marketing and content ideas
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Priorities for the next 90 days
The objective is not to create a perfect transcript. The objective is to capture the full train of thought before it disappears.
[Screenshot: Recording a voice message in ChatGPT]
Step 5: Complete the session and review the analysis
When you have finished your final recording, type, or say:
Session complete.
Because you set up the process at the beginning, ChatGPT already knows what analysis you want. My preferred instruction is deliberately straightforward:
Give me a summary, key insights and any actions that logically drop out of the update. Be concise and organised.
This usually gives me exactly what I need. I receive a structured summary of the discussion, the most important insights and a practical list of actions that naturally arise from what I have said.
From there, I can continue the conversation if further work is needed. I might ask ChatGPT to turn the actions into a project plan, identify assumptions that need to be tested, draft an email, develop a 90-day plan or turn the thinking into a presentation or article.
The initial summary is useful, but it is often only the beginning of the process. Once your thinking has been organised, it becomes much easier to decide what should happen next.
How do you record more than ten minutes on one topic?
Some topics need more time than a single recording allows. A strategy review, a leadership issue, a new product idea or a major commercial opportunity may take 20, 30 or 40 minutes to unpack properly.
The solution is to keep every recording inside the same ChatGPT conversation.
When the nine-minute timer sounds, finish your sentence and send the recording. ChatGPT should reply only with:
Part received.
You can then reset the timer and start the next recording. Continue exactly where you left off, or briefly explain what the next part will cover. For example, you might begin by saying:
“This is Part 2. I want to explore the opportunity in more detail.”
“This is Part 3. I now want to think through the customer problem.”
“This is Part 4. I want to consider the risks and practical barriers.”
“This is Part 5. I want to identify what a small pilot might look like.”
You can repeat this process for as many recordings as required. The important point is not to request a separate summary after each section. Let ChatGPT collect the complete discussion first and analyse everything only after you say the session is finished.
I have found that multiple recordings can actually improve the quality of the Thinking Session. The short pause between each section gives me time to reflect, remember another point or recognise an assumption I have not yet challenged. Rather than interrupting the thinking, the pause often improves it.
By the time the session is complete, ChatGPT may have 30 or 40 minutes of material, but it can still consolidate that information into one concise summary, a set of key insights and a manageable list of actions. Type or say “Session Complete” and your AI will proceeed with the initial analysis and summary.
How can this help with blue-sky thinking, NPD and opportunities?
This process is not limited to solving operational problems. In fact, some of its best applications involve topics where the answer is not yet clear.
Blue-sky thinking often begins with fragments. You may have noticed a trend, heard repeated feedback from customers or recognised a capability in your business that could be used in a different way. At this stage, the ideas are rarely ready for a formal business case, and trying to structure them too early can shut down useful thinking.
A voice-based Thinking Session gives you space to explore the possibilities without forcing an immediate conclusion. You can talk through what you are seeing, why it might matter and where the opportunity could lead. ChatGPT can then organise those fragments into common themes and help identify which areas deserve further investigation.
The same approach is useful for new product development. You might discuss:
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Problems customers repeatedly mention
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Gaps in your current offer
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Ideas for improving an existing product
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New services you could provide
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Different ways of packaging or pricing your offer
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Potential customer segments
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Delivery models or partnerships
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Risks that may affect commercial viability
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What a small pilot or test might involve
After the session, you can ask ChatGPT to help distinguish between an interesting idea and a genuine commercial opportunity. It can identify assumptions that need to be tested, suggest questions for customer research and help organise the next stage of evaluation.
For example, you might ask:
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Which ideas appear to have the strongest commercial potential?
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What customer problem does each idea solve?
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What assumptions need to be tested?
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What evidence would we need before investing further?
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Which opportunity could be tested quickly and at low cost?
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What are the major risks, barriers and dependencies?
AI should not make the final commercial decision, but it can help you start that decision with your thinking already organised.
The ChatGPT voice recording workflow works well whenever the topic benefits from reflection, exploration or structured thinking. It can be used for operational issues, strategic questions and creative work.
Common applications include:
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Weekly and monthly planning
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Leadership challenges
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Staff performance and difficult conversations
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Client meeting debriefs
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Sales pipeline reviews
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Strategic planning
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Blue-sky thinking
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New product development
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New service development
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Growth and market opportunities
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Business model ideas
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Partnership opportunities
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Marketing and content planning
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Workshop and presentation development
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Quarterly business reviews
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Identifying priorities for the next 90 days
It is also useful after a meeting, workshop or strategy session. Rather than relying only on rough notes, you can record your own reflections while the discussion is still fresh and ask ChatGPT to identify the implications, priorities and actions that matter most.
What are the limitations?
Like any AI workflow, this process is not perfect. ChatGPT may misunderstand names, acronyms, technical language or industry terms, so you should review the transcript and final summary before relying on it. A small transcription error can significantly change the meaning of an important point.
You should also be careful with confidential information. Think before sharing sensitive client details, employee information, financial data, commercially important material or early-stage intellectual property. Make sure your use of AI is consistent with your organisation’s policies and your professional responsibilities.
It is also important to remember that ChatGPT is organising your thinking rather than replacing your judgement. AI can summarise, identify patterns and suggest actions, but you remain responsible for deciding what is accurate, practical and commercially appropriate.
This matters particularly when you are discussing blue-sky ideas or new product development. AI can make an incomplete idea sound more developed or attractive than it really is. Customer demand, commercial viability and practical feasibility still need to be tested.
Finally, platform features and recording limits can change. Check the version of the AI platform you are using rather than assuming the same limits will always apply.
Why this AI habit works
People often focus on finding the perfect AI prompt, but prompts only create value when they are part of a practical routine. A good workflow used regularly will usually deliver far more value than a clever prompt used once.
This process works because it is easy to repeat. You open ChatGPT, navigate to the right conversation, set up the task, ask Siri for a nine-minute timer and start talking. There is no complicated preparation and no need to create a formal brief before you begin.
The real benefit is not better note-taking. It is better thinking.
You create space to work through an issue, explore an opportunity or develop an idea. You capture your thoughts before they disappear, identify what matters and turn the discussion into practical actions while the thinking is still fresh.
For a busy business owner or manager, that can save time, improve decision-making and reduce the number of valuable ideas that are lost during the working week.
Three key takeaways
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Capture your thinking while it is fresh. Your best ideas often happen away from your desk. ChatGPT voice recording gives you a practical way to capture and organise them before they disappear.
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Use multiple recordings for larger topics. Keep every recording in the same conversation, allow ChatGPT to acknowledge each part and request the analysis only after you say “Session complete.”
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Use AI to explore opportunities as well as solve problems. Blue-sky thinking, new product development and commercial opportunity exploration are often where this workflow delivers its greatest value.
Bonus: Long-Form Thinking Session Prompt
Copy and paste this prompt into ChatGPT before you begin. It sets up both the collection of your recordings and the final analysis, so you do not need to provide new instructions after each part.
Step 1 – Purpose of the session
I am going to think out loud about one business topic. My comments may be unstructured, repetitive or incomplete, and my thinking may change as I talk through the topic.
Your role during the recording stage is to collect the information without interrupting the flow of the session or attempting to analyse an incomplete version of my thinking.
Step 2 – Collecting multiple recordings
I may send this Thinking Session across one or more voice recordings. Treat every recording as another part of the same continuous conversation and retain the context from all previous parts.
After each recording, reply only:
“Part received.”
Do not summarise, interpret, analyse, challenge or recommend anything after an individual recording.
Wait until I say:
“Session complete.”
Step 3 – Analysing the complete session
When I say “Session complete”, review every recording together as one complete Thinking Session.
Provide:
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A concise summary of the overall update
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The key insights that emerge from my thinking
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Any actions that logically drop out of the update
Where relevant, group related ideas together, remove unnecessary repetition and note any important contradictions, gaps or unresolved questions.
Step 4 – Separating my thinking from AI suggestions
Clearly distinguish between:
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Points, ideas or conclusions that came directly from me
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Additional observations, interpretations or suggestions that you have added