"Overnight success is a myth. Behind most “overnight” breakouts are years—sometimes many years—of work when things feel like they’re not yet working."
Adam Kreek
Founder Built for Hard
- Date
Why Four Years Matters: The Power of Quadrennial Planning
posted in Business Coaching
Adam Kreek
In many of my keynotes or strategic planning sessions, I will pull out my Olympic gold medal, pass it around for people to hold and ask this question:
“Why do the Olympics happen once every four years?”
Picture yourself in the audience. What would you say?
Answers come out of the group. Some say: "to build anticipation." Some say: "it costs too much." Some say: "to allow for recovery." Some say: "to train hard without burning out." And often, people notice: you can’t do world-class work in three months, or one year, or maybe even two — you need sustained effort, iteration, refinement.
Now, think about this next question:
- Why does an undergraduate degree normally take four years?
- Why do we elect many leaders (like U.S. Presidents, Canadian Prime ministers) for four‑year terms?
In Canada’s Westminster-style system, things are a bit more… flexible than fixed. But since 2007, federal law has set elections every four years, unless Parliament is dissolved earlier. It’s not a hard rule (thanks to our flexible constitution), but it's the default.
These are not coincidences. Institutional wisdom often recognizes that breakthroughs—in leadership, business, art, human performance—don’t happen instantaneously. They happen after repeated cycles, when small improvements compound, when learning and setbacks mature into competence, resilience, and vision.
More Institutions Use 4-Year Chunks Than You Think
The Olympic cycle isn’t the only system that leans on four years to create meaningful change. Across politics, education, business, and beyond, 4-year planning horizons show up again and again — not just out of tradition, but because they work.
Here are some standout examples:
- University Presidencies: In countries like Chile, public university leaders serve renewable 4-year terms. It’s long enough to implement structural and cultural shifts, short enough to reset if leadership goes sideways.
- Bachelor’s Degrees: Most undergraduate degrees around the world take 4 years to complete. That’s enough time for foundational learning, personal growth, and professional direction to align.
- Political Systems: From U.S. Presidents to provincial governments across Canada, four-year terms are the norm. It gives leaders time to act—but holds them accountable to voters before they overstay their welcome.
- Corporate Strategy: Many companies build 3–5 year strategic plans, and 4 years often hits the sweet spot. It's long enough to pursue stretch goals, short enough to stay nimble.
- Innovation Cycles: Product roadmaps and innovation pipelines often follow 4-year phases to bring complex ideas to market—balancing risk, iteration, and timing.
- Financial Markets: Stock market analysts track 4-year political cycles due to predictable patterns in fiscal policy, investor sentiment, and regulatory movement—suggesting broader systems adjust to 4-year rhythms.
- Planning Norms: Non-profits, governments, and institutions routinely build funding models and vision frameworks around 4-year spans. It’s become a cultural expectation—even when it’s not formalized.
In short: Four years is enough time to create, struggle, iterate, learn, pivot—and win. The 4HAG system taps into this rhythm, giving leaders a proven structure to chase their next breakthrough.
Advantages of Quadrennial Planning for Business
Putting this all together, here are the key advantages leaders get from adopting a four‑year (quadrennial) planning frame:
- Ambitious, stretch goals become possible
You give yourself enough runway to think big. Some transformations just don’t compress into shorter frames. A four‑year horizon gives room for game changing moves, not just incremental tweaks. - Allows for learning, testing, iteration
Disappointment, feedback, course correction — those are inevitable. With four years, you can try things, learn what works and what doesn’t, adapt; then double down. - Reduces urgency fatigue + panic reactions
If you only plan annually, every quarterly setback feels catastrophic. With a quadrennial plan, you can see which year you’re in, which year’s work is foundational, which year is for scaling. The pressure is managed because you have perspective. - Aligns vision, culture, leadership over time
Long‑term cultural shifts, leadership maturation, team habit changes — these often take longer than one year. Over four years, you can align story, values, structure to support the big goals. - Momentum builds & compounds
Small wins in Year 1 feed into bigger wins in Year 2–4. Without a multi‑year lens, wins are fragmented. With one, you build on them, use them as fuel. - Better strategic investment & resource allocation
You can invest in people, R&D, culture, systems with longer payoff. Some resources are “slow burn”—you couldn’t justify them in a single year, but over four, they become essential.
Conclusion: What Doesn’t Fit in Short Frames
Overnight success is a myth. Behind most “overnight” breakouts are years—sometimes many years—of work when things feel like they’re not yet working. Tiny margins, invisible progress, mental resolve. A quadrennial planning system like 4HAG gives business leaders a structure for that invisible work.
It gives you:
- space to struggle
- permission to experiment
- clarity to see where you are in the journey
- the discipline to stay aligned even when progress is hard to measure
Breakthroughs Aren’t Linear. Neither is Your Growth.
Most leaders chase breakthroughs like they’re vending machines:
Insert effort. Get results.
But that’s not how it works—not in sport, not in business, not in life.
Welcome to Breakthrough Theory.
This graph says what every Olympic athlete, scale-up founder, and executive leader learns the hard way:
Progress is lumpy.
You push and push, often with very little to show. It feels like you’re stuck on a plateau.
Then—if you stick with it—something clicks. The system realigns, the habits lock in, the strategy sticks.
Boom. Breakthrough.
But then? You plateau again. And the cycle begins anew.
From Olympic Gold to Business Breakthroughs: Why the 4HAG System Works
I won an Olympic gold medal in 5 minutes and 23.89 seconds.
But that moment?
It was built on 12 years of training.
- 7,200 sessions
- 13,000 hours on the water
- 2.2 million practice strokes
Only 220 of those strokes happened in the final race.
The rest were preparation. Testing. Recovery. Frustration. Team meetings. Focused grind.
Sound familiar?
That’s not just a story about sport—it’s a blueprint for business.
The Strategic Power of 4HAG Planning
Breakthroughs don’t happen in a quarter. And they rarely show up in year one.
That’s why I teach leaders and teams the 4HAG System—a quadrennial planning method based on Olympic performance cycles. The system gives you the structure, focus, and discipline to chase huge goals over time—and actually reach them.
4HAG: Four-Year Huge Audacious Goal
This is your Olympics. One big, bold objective that’s impossible to hit in a year, but possible with a plan, a team, and consistent action.
1HAG → 2HAG → 3HAG → 4HAG
Each year is a chapter. In the first year, you regroup and set your base. By year four, you’re primed for your breakthrough—your version of the gold medal.
Annual Planning = Race Season
Once a year, you step back. You realign your team, your values, your strategy. You identify your next big sprint. You reset the system.
Quarterly Recalibration = Training Checkpoints
Every 90 days, you check in. Are we on pace? Are we rowing in the same direction? What’s working? What’s off course?
Monthly Block Clearing = Practical Problem Solving
Each month, you clear what’s in the way—team friction, client issues, internal bottlenecks. You stay in the work, but stay aligned with the long game.
Why the 4HAG System Works
The 4HAG (Four-Year Huge Audacious Goal) is built on this reality.
It’s not based on hype—it’s based on the natural rhythm of transformation:
- Year 1: Get clear, start building, face the resistance.
- Year 2: Refine, adapt, learn from what didn’t work.
- Year 3: Stack wins, gain traction, build momentum.
- Year 4: Breakthrough—then prepare for the next mountain.
The second image about breakthrough theory says it best:
Breakthrough takes 4+ years.
After that, the work is still hard—but now it’s familiar hard. You’ve built capacity. You’ve built a team. You’ve built trust in yourself.
That’s the power of a 4HAG. It gives leaders enough time to push through the plateaus—without panicking, quitting, or blowing everything up too early.
Your Overnight Success Will Take at Least Four Years
The ViDA 4HAG system isn’t just a planning tool—it’s a patience engine. It keeps you locked into your long-game, even when results are slow.
If you want your next business breakthrough, your next reinvention, your next Olympic-sized leap forward?
Commit to the full cycle. The 4HAG is where the magic happens.
The Power of 4HAG
Four years isn’t a compromise — it’s the minimum time you need to turn ambition into reality.
–––––
Adam Kreek is on a mission to positively impact organizational cultures and leaders who make things happen.
Kreek is an Executive Business Coach who lives in Victoria, BC, near Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, and Seattle, Washington, USA, in the Pacific Northwest. He works with clients globally, often travelling to California in the San Francisco Bay Area, Atlanta, Georgia, Toronto, Ontario and Montreal, Quebec. He is an Olympic Gold Medalist, a storied adventurer and a father.
He authored the bestselling business book, The Responsibility Ethic: 12 Strategies Exceptional People Use to Do the Work and Make Success Happen.
Discover our thoughts on Values here.
Want to increase your leadership achievement? Learn more about Kreek’s coaching here.
Want to book a keynote that leaves a lasting impact? Learn more about Kreek’s live event service here.