5 Steps to Productive Quarterly Planning
You know what they say about failing to plan? They were right.
Fail to plan or plan to fail? Now more than ever, Benjamin Franklin’s wisdom still holds true. With the 4th quarter quickly approaching, what is your plan?
For badasses in business, failure isn’t an option. It starts with a quarterly planning meeting—and these five simple steps to ensure its success.
STEP 1: Make sure the right people are in the room.
Too many cooks in the kitchen spoil the soup. It’s important to include at least one key stakeholder from each department, but make sure they’re geared to actively contribute. If not, they are only taking up space at this stage—use their (and your) time wisely!
STEP 2: Find the perfect balance.
A successful meeting contains a good mix of visionaries (Ideas! Passion! Dreams! ) and integrators (Structure! Organization! Reality!). You need a healthy dose of both to make sure the chosen goals will actually get done. This isn’t a time to silo your thinking or fill the room with nodding heads—constructive conflict is a good thing here.
STEP 3: Set the tone—and the time.
Company planning meetings are important—give them the space they deserve. This means two hours minimum, with a quick break in between. Be ruthlessly focused—make it clear that this is a no email/phone zone and that you’re expecting them to devote this time for the success of the business. Note: Some companies set aside a longer period of time (and some leave home base entirely—more on that in next week’s email!).
STEP 4: Have a clear agenda and share it ahead of time.
Even Sharing your agenda in advance of the meeting prepares your team to arrive focused and ready to roll up their sleeves and get to work on what they can bring to the table.
A solid agenda should include:
Your vision for the company—and the quarter. It’s important for your goals to have a compelling why.
A recap of what you’ve accomplished so far
Scope and bandwidth for future goals and projects
A call for ideas—and an expectation of the Key Performance Metrics to support the efforts.
STEP 5: Appoint an Action + Accountability person.
Every meeting needs a detail-driven powerhouse to take notes, collect and prioritize ideas, and send a recap email to confirm all decisions and deliverables. These should be spelled out in a list of action items with assigned due dates and who’s ultimately responsible for each task.
Tip: If the meeting is virtual, record your meeting and assign it to your trusted assistant to triage—they may pick up details that would otherwise be missed!In the end, the most important part of any quarterly meeting is to walk away with everyone agreeing on the desired outcomes. How will you ensure this happens?
Want to get a head start? Grab our FREE One Page Business Plan, designed to help you wrap your brain around what is most important to your business and what needs to be done to achieve those goals.
Put in the time to plan now to ensure you’ll reap the benefits later. How you manage your company is too damn important—"winging it” is not a business strategy, it's a plan to fail.
And you’re better than that.
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