On the Origin and Intent of This Publication
Growth Plan Hub was founded in the autumn of 2017 on the premise that the strategic planning document had become, for most organizations, a quarterly performance rather than an instrument of commitment. Seven volumes later, the premise holds.
§1 — Origins
The publication began as an internal memorandum circulated among a dozen operating partners and chief financial officers who had grown dissatisfied with the quality of strategic discourse available to the mid-market. The first issue ran to eighteen pages, was printed on a borrowed Heidelberg in a commercial bindery south of Cleveland, and was mailed to sixty-three recipients. The second issue doubled that number without promotion. The third tripled it. What began as a private correspondence has become, by accident and then by design, a quarterly review.
The founding editors met on a Tuesday in September of 2017 at a diner on Superior Avenue. The memorandum that came out of that meeting — four pages, single-spaced, titled What We Read, and What We Do Not — remains our editorial charter. A facsimile hangs in the production room.
§2 — Editorial Stance
We hold three convictions. First, that planning is not forecasting. Second, that capital allocation is the principal act of management, and that everything else is a downstream consequence. Third, that the mid-market — firms between fifty and five hundred million in revenue — is systematically underserved by the strategic literature written for either the founder or the Fortune 500.
Our tone is formal because our subject rewards formality. We publish long pieces because the questions we examine cannot be resolved in eight hundred words. We do not chase news cycles. We do not publish on platforms we do not control. We do not accept sponsored content, we do not sell placement, and we do not grant anonymity to anyone with something to gain by remaining unnamed.
§3 — The Masthead
Our contributors are practitioners — operators, directors, advisors — who write under their own names or, where circumstances require, under a standing byline of the editors. Byline discretion is granted only when a named attribution would compromise a live commercial relationship or a continuing fiduciary duty.
§4 — Production
Each issue is typeset in Bebas Neue for display and Roboto for body, printed on uncoated 80-lb. stock, and perfect-bound in runs of between nine hundred and twelve hundred copies. The binder we use has not changed since Volume II. The paper stock changed once, in 2021, and generated more correspondence than any editorial decision in the publication's history.
The editorial calendar runs in four fixed windows: Winter (February), Spring (May), Summer (August), Autumn (November). Supplements are issued irregularly, at the discretion of the editor-in-chief, and are numbered as addenda to the preceding issue.
§5 — Submissions
Editorial submissions are considered on the basis of existing relationships with members of the masthead. We are a small publication and our capacity is finite. New correspondence is welcomed through introduction from a current contributor or subscriber.
The editors meet on the second Thursday of each month to consider pitches in hand. Decisions are communicated in writing, by letter, within ten working days of that meeting.
The second Thursday of every month: pitches in hand, considered in order.