If You Can’t Define the Target State, You Can’t Build the Roadmap

A roadmap built before the target state is defined is usually a list of activity.

The organization knows it wants to grow, transform, modernize, improve performance, or enter a new market. Those ambitions may be legitimate. They still leave too much undefined to tell people what to build.

When I hear a goal such as “we need to transform the business,” my next question is: What should be different when this works?

The answer has to go beyond the financial result. It needs to describe enough of the future business that leaders can work backward from it.

An ambition leaves too much undefined

Suppose a company wants to double revenue in three years.

That target says nothing about how the growth will be produced.

Will it come from new markets? A new product? Better conversion? Higher retention? A larger sales force? A different channel? A new business model?

Each answer implies a different company.

If growth depends on entering new markets, the future business may need a repeatable way to identify attractive markets, recruit local operators, support a larger field organization, and maintain attractive unit economics.

If growth depends on a new product, the company may need different product capabilities, a new sales motion, new service processes, and systems that can support the offer.

If growth depends on improving conversion, the important changes may sit inside the customer journey rather than in lead generation.

The revenue target matters, but it does not tell the organization which of those businesses it is trying to become.

The target state makes the strategy concrete

I saw this at Sears Grand.

The strategic idea was to create a freestanding retail format that gave customers more reasons to visit Sears and allowed the company to compete in a broader retail environment.

That idea became useful to the people building the pilot only when it was translated into operating terms.

What merchandise categories would the stores carry? How would those categories work together? What would customers experience differently? What systems and processes would employees need? What capabilities had to exist in the field? What kind of store organization could run the format consistently?

Those questions turned the strategy into a business that could be built.

That is what I mean by a target state.

It is a practical description of the result and the operating conditions required to produce it.

A good target state exposes what is missing

Once the future state is concrete enough, the gaps become easier to see.

Sometimes the business lacks a capability. Sometimes a process cannot handle the future volume. Sometimes the organization is designed around the old model. Sometimes the technology can support the strategy but the economics cannot. Sometimes the customer experience depends on a handoff that no one owns.

The destination only needs enough specificity to expose the important differences between today’s business and the one leadership intends to create.

At Ember, the company had valuable mesh-networking technology. Customers, however, needed a complete path from devices and radio hardware through networking, data collection, applications, and an operational result.

Defining that broader customer outcome changed the strategic question.

Ember did not need to own every capability in the chain. It needed to decide which part of the system it could own credibly and which capabilities had to come from partners.

The target state made that decision easier because the company could see the whole solution rather than only the technology it already had.

The target state gives the roadmap a test

Without a target state, initiatives tend to justify themselves individually.

A new system has a business case. A reorganization has an executive sponsor. A product team has a launch date. A transformation office has a portfolio.

The harder question is whether those investments are building the business leadership says it wants.

A target state gives leaders a reference point for that decision.

Does this project create a capability the future business requires?

Does it improve a process that has to work differently?

Does it support the customer experience the strategy depends on?

Does it help the organization make a decision it cannot make today?

Does it remove a real dependency, or is it simply work that seems strategic?

Those questions change prioritization because projects are no longer judged only on their own merits. They are judged against the business the organization has decided to create.

It also changes how progress is measured

The final business result may take time to appear.

A new market may take years to mature. A new operating model may take months to stabilize. A technology investment may not show its full economic value immediately.

Leaders still need evidence that the business itself is moving toward the intended state.

That evidence might be a repeatable market-entry process. It might be a customer journey that no longer depends on a manual workaround. It might be managers gaining access to information they could not previously use. It might be a new product that can be supported without constant intervention from a few experts.

Those conditions are not substitutes for the financial outcome. They show whether the organization is creating the business that is supposed to produce it.

Define the business before you schedule the work

When a roadmap discussion begins with a list of initiatives, I usually want to move backward.

What are we trying to make possible?

What will customers be able to do that they cannot do today?

What will employees do differently?

What capabilities will the company need to own?

What needs to come from partners or vendors?

What systems and processes have to support the new model?

What result should all of those changes produce?

Once those answers are concrete, the roadmap has a destination.

Without them, the organization can complete every project on the plan and still discover that it built a collection of improvements rather than the business it intended to create.