Building Capability
Tool: The Three Horizons Mapper
Chapter: 3 — The Opportunity Audit
Purpose: Help you see your organisation’s full opportunity landscape across all three horizons before making any build decisions.
How to Use This Tool
Start with your Business Landscape Map from Chapter 2. If you’ve completed the Base Layer and at least two or three Process Overlays, place that map in front of you before you begin. The Three Horizons exercise is most powerful when you’re reading from a picture of reality, not working from memory.
Work through each horizon in order. For each one, answer the questions honestly — not based on what feels realistic given today’s constraints, but based on what could be true with the right tools and investment.
Allow 60–90 minutes. Do this with two or three people who between them understand operations, customers, and commercial strategy.
Horizon One: Scale Up
Doing what you already do, better.
Before you answer these questions: Look at your Process Overlays from Chapter 2. The Horizon One opportunities are usually visible there — in the amber and red steps, the handoff friction points, the roles that appear on the most overlays, and the decisions that are currently being made manually. Use the overlays as your starting point before answering from memory.
Answer each of the following:
1. Where does volume create the most strain?
List the processes or functions in your organisation that would break — or require significant extra headcount — if your business grew by 50% tomorrow.
Process / function:
Current constraint:
What good would look like:
2. What takes longer than it should?
List the top three activities where the time consumed is significantly out of proportion to the value delivered.
Activity:
Time currently consumed (estimate):
What a well-designed system might reduce that to:
3. Where do errors cluster?
List the processes where mistakes happen most often, and what those mistakes typically cost (in time, money, or customer trust).
Process:
Error type:
Typical cost of error:
4. What does your team wish they didn’t have to do manually?
Ask directly. The answers are almost always useful.
Team member / role:
Task they want off their plate:
Why it currently requires them:
Horizon One Summary:
What are your top two or three Horizon One opportunities?
1.
2.
3.
Horizon Two: Scale Out
Taking what you know and applying it somewhere new.
Before you answer these questions: Look at the customer zone at the top of your Base Layer. Who is currently there? Now ask who is not there — and why. Your current model (the operation, systems, and processes shown on your map) was designed around the customers you have. Horizon Two asks what changes if you design for different customers, a different geography, or a different delivery model.
5. Who else could benefit from what you know?
Your organisation has built expertise, processes, and knowledge that took years to develop. Who else — a different customer segment, a different geography, a different delivery model — could benefit from that expertise?
What you know / can do well:
Who currently can't access it (and why):
What would need to change to reach them:
6. What would a different delivery model make possible?
If you could deliver your expertise or service without requiring a human in the room for every interaction, what would that open up? Consider: online, self-service, subscription, platform, white-label.
Current delivery model:
Alternative delivery model:
What this would change (capacity / reach / economics):
7. What adjacent services do your clients ask for that you don’t currently offer?
These are often signals of an untapped Horizon Two opportunity.
Request:
Why you don't currently offer it:
Whether the underlying knowledge exists in your organisation:
Horizon Two Summary:
What are your top one or two Horizon Two opportunities?
1.
2.
Horizon Three: Blue Ocean
Building something that doesn’t exist yet.
Before you answer these questions: Look at the systems column of your Base Layer, and then at your Process Overlays. Where does your organisation concentrate the most expertise — the steps where a senior person’s judgement is essential, and couldn’t easily be replaced? Those concentrations of expertise are the seed of a Horizon Three possibility. If that knowledge could be captured in a system and made available without needing that person in the room, what would that make possible?
These are harder questions. Don’t dismiss them too quickly.
8. What decision do your clients currently make badly — because they don’t have the right information?
If they had a tool that gave them exactly the right information at the right time, what would they decide differently?
Decision:
Why they currently make it badly:
What information would change it:
9. What would need to be true for a much smaller team to do what you currently do?
This is the leverage question. Where does your current model scale with people rather than with systems — and what would it take to break that ratio?
Current people-dependent activity:
What would need to change:
What that would make possible:
10. If a well-funded competitor decided to enter your market, what would they build that you haven’t built yet?
This is an uncomfortable question. It’s also one of the most useful.
What they'd build:
Why it would be effective:
Whether you could build it first:
11. What would make direct comparison with your competitors difficult or irrelevant?
Not “better than them” — but genuinely in a different category.
Current basis of comparison:
What would shift the basis:
What you'd need to build to get there:
Horizon Three Summary:
What is your most compelling Horizon Three possibility?
Description:
Why it's genuinely different, not just better:
What would need to be true to pursue it:
Pulling It Together
Once you’ve worked through all three horizons, review your answers and answer these final questions:
Which horizon contains your most valuable opportunity overall?
Horizon: 1 / 2 / 3
Why:
Which horizon contains your most achievable near-term opportunity?
Horizon: 1 / 2 / 3
Why:
Is there a Horizon One starting point that also lays the foundation for your Horizon Two or Three ambition?
This is the ideal entry point — a first build that delivers near-term value and opens the door to the bigger opportunity.
Potential entry point:
Near-term value it delivers:
How it connects to the larger opportunity:
Online Version
Want to go deeper?
The online version of this tool includes a facilitated workshop format with department-by-department prompts, a scoring matrix to rank opportunities across all three horizons, and a guide for running the Three Horizons conversation with your leadership team.
Available in the members area at [website]