Prepare for your annual
planning session
Running your own annual planning session? Answer five quick questions for the standard two-day agenda, prep recommendations, a team health exercise, and relevant videos. Designed for self-implementing teams, with explainer videos from Ninety’s Professional Services team.
- 5 questions
- About 2 minutes
- Your 2-day plan
Your session plan is ready
A first annual plan does not need to be elaborate. It needs to get made, and then get repeated. Here is a version sized to a team doing this for the first time.
Plans written by one person stay one person’s plan. This session is built so the whole leadership team makes the decisions together, and the departments hear them.
Annual goals that never reach the Scorecard, Rocks, and To-Dos are a wish. This plan connects each Rock to a 1-Year Goal so quarterly work moves the annual plan forward.
Slides, spreadsheets, and notes leave the team without one view of the plan. This session runs from one agenda, and the plan lives where the weekly meeting lives.
Plans fade when nobody looks at them after January. This plan ends with the three places you repeat it, so it is still alive in March.
You’ve done this and it worked. This session keeps the shape you know and uses the year’s results to decide what changes.
- Facilitator Your coach Your team
- Prep Basics Basics + Checkup Full prep
- Rollout Leadership + departments Leadership team
- Team size 5 or fewer 6 to 9 10 or more
Your prep list
- Confirm the agenda and schedule the session. Here’s the standard two-day agenda for all teams.
- Update your numbers. Open the Quarterly and Annual Scorecard tabs to enter goals and actuals, then confirm the 1-Year Plan on the V/TO still shows the targets you set.
- Decide who’s at the table: your leadership team, and only your leadership team.
- Confirm the agenda and schedule the session.
- Update your numbers on the Quarterly and Annual Scorecard tabs and the V/TO 1-Year Plan.
- Launch the Organizational Checkup. In Ninety it’s the Org Assessment: an Owner or Admin goes to Assessments, chooses Launch existing, picks Org Assessment, and sets the end date to the day before the session.
- Choose a team health exercise and tell the team what to expect.
- Confirm the agenda and schedule the session.
- Update your numbers on the Quarterly and Annual Scorecard tabs and the V/TO 1-Year Plan.
- Launch the Organizational Checkup (the Org Assessment in Ninety) with the end date set to the day before.
- Choose a team health exercise and share the process with the team a week or two out: agenda, logistics, and their prep.
- Ask everyone to add Issues with a priority and drop Rock candidates on the Planning Board as drafts.
- Ask everyone to come ready to say what worked, what didn’t, and why.
Your exercise
No prep needed. Five to seven questions about who each person is outside of work. Give everyone a minute to think, then go around the table. If time is tight, skip it this year.
Everyone takes a test beforehand and you discuss the results together. Lowest risk, works at any size, and a strong choice for a first session.
The group rates itself against the five dysfunctions. Works well for teams of six or more.
History, heartbreak, hero, hope. More personal and more intentional. For a small team that already trusts itself and has the time.
If a coach is facilitating, they’ll choose. Knowing the options helps you tell them where your team stands.
The two-day agenda
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Review the year Assess the last quarter and the full year against your plan. Review Rocks, Goals, and Measurables. What worked, what didn’t, and why?
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Team health Your exercise: .
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Organizational Checkup Review the Org Assessment results together to understand strengths and gaps across the Six Key Components.
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SWOT Review strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. Capture any Issues to address in the coming year.
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V/TO review Revisit your core values through your 3-Year Picture to ground annual decisions in your long-term vision.
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1-Year Plan Set three to seven goals with clear measures of success, each achievable in more than one way. Decide them carefully, because they shouldn’t change during the year.
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Rocks Choose three to seven company Rocks for the first quarter, each with one owner and a connection to an annual goal. Rocks are what adapt quarter to quarter.
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IDS Identify, discuss, and solve the Issues that could block the plan.
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Close Confirm next steps and owners, then rate the session.
Your coach runs these two days and will set the agenda. Here’s the standard shape so you know what to expect. Have one person scribe directly in Ninety during the session so there’s no homework and everything is captured live.
You don’t need to build this from scratch. On the Accelerate and Thrive plans, the Annual Planning Meeting agenda is already in your account under Meetings, and anyone with a Manager role or higher can edit it. Finish day one in Ninety and your team’s Meetings page offers a Start Day 2 option.
Bring the plan to your departments
Within two weeks, each department holds a shorter planning session, a half day to a day. Start with the company’s direction, then choose two or three department Rocks that support its annual goals. In Ninety, each team has its own copy of the Annual Planning Meeting agenda to trim.
Three places to repeat the plan
- State of the Company. Within two to three weeks, bring everyone together for 60 to 90 minutes. Share wins, review the year, walk through the V/TO, annual goals, and company Rocks. Then every quarter.
- Quarterly 1-on-1s. Connect the plan to each person’s work.
- Weekly Level 10 Meeting. Check whether Rocks are on track and review the Scorecard. Raise off-track numbers as Issues so the team can address them early.
People need to hear a plan more than once before it sticks. The cadence does the repeating for you.
Watch: How to Keep Your Annual Plan Alive All Year (opens in a new tab)The videos worth your time
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Why Annual Plans Fail (and How to Make Yours Stick)
Ninety · Christine Watts
(opens in a new tab)
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Preparing for a Productive Annual Planning Session
Ninety · Christine Watts
(opens in a new tab)
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Team Health Exercises
Ninety · Christine Watts
(opens in a new tab)
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Using the Org Assessment
Ninety · Christine Watts
(opens in a new tab)
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The Building Blocks of a Strong Annual Plan
Ninety · Christine Watts
(opens in a new tab)
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Turning Your Annual Plan into Quarterly Priorities
Ninety · Christine Watts
(opens in a new tab)
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How to Keep Your Annual Plan Alive All Year
Ninety · Christine Watts
(opens in a new tab)
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How to Build an Agenda for Your Department's Annual Plan
Ninety · Christine Watts
(opens in a new tab)
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State of the Company
Ninety · Christine Watts
(opens in a new tab)
Download the PDF
Our standard version, ready to print.
- Annual Planning Checklist
- 2-Day Annual Planning Agenda