For some, the Annual Planning Meeting can be daunting. 2 full days, stepped away from the day to day of your business to spend intentional time working on the business. To some, this can seem like a long process, but each day is important and has very clear mission to accomplish.
Objectives Day 1: Increase Team Health, Clear Company Vision, and Create Issues
Objectives Day 2: Clear Plan To Achieve Vision, Clear Plan For Next Quarter, and Resolve All Key Issues
And to meet these two objectives, you can follow the typical Annual Planning Agenda.
Agenda: Breaking down your typical Annual Planning Session
DAY 1
Check In ~30 minutes
Start the day by having your team share:
- Business Greats
- Personal and Unexpected Success
- Expectations
Take 5 minutes to silently write these and then go around having your team share 1 and 2 from their list. Once everyone has gone, have each person share their expectations for the next two days.
Review previous year/ quarterly Rocks ~45 minutes
Spend most of your time in 1 year plan (~30 minutes) and the remaining time reviewing previous quarters Rocks (~15 minutes).
During the 1-Year Plan review, consider your Revenue, Profit and Measurables numbers, taking into consideration what you hit, and what you may need to make adjustments on. When reviewing your goals, mark done or not done, calculating a completion percentage just like you will with your Quarterly Rocks. The goal is to hit 80% for each!
Team Health ~3 hours
Spend time going through Patrick Lencioni's Team Health Pyramid. Rate your team for each level of Trust, Conflict, Commitment, Accountability, Results on a scale of 1-10.
This process will help your team understand why trust is critical to producing results, and help your team see value in the next trust building exercises.
There are a variety of exercises you can do, so one example is a personal histories exercise. Take 5 quiet minutes to answer the following things:
- Hometown
- Number of siblings and best thing about one of them
- Greatest Challenge Growing Up
- First Job
- Unique about you that not one person here knows about
Take time to have your team share, and add in 2 or 3 more exercises to finish the remaining time. Your Implementer will have a variety of exercises (like "One Thing"), and if you are self implementing let us know if you need some more guidance!
Organizational Checkup™ ~1 hour
After going through your team building, you should receive great open and honest answers to these 20 questions. Take the average of the scores across all people. Success will be above 80%.
This process without a doubt will show you where your team is not aligned, and help create issues for your list.
S.W.O.T. Analysis and Issues List ~1 hour
Going through the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats of your business will help smoke out any additional issues on the list. Don't be afraid to spend some extra time here as long as all discussions are focused on bringing alignment and issues to light. Be sure to notate all issues within Ninety so you are ready to solve tomorrow!
Review your V/TO™ ~2 hours
Challenge all aspects of your vision ensuring that you all agree 100% on your Core Values, Core Focus™, Niche, Marketing Strategy and 10-Year Target™.
Go through the same analysis of your 3-Year Picture™. Move the date out a year and spend time visualizing what the company looks like down the road, and taking a stab at actual numbers you would like to hit. Debate and discuss this until there is 100% agreement.
Day 2
Check-In ~15 minutes
Share some highlights from day 1 and make re-share your expectations.
Review the Issues List and 3-Year Picture™ ~15 minutes
Spend time going through each issue one by one and your 3-Year Picture line by line. Create and combine issues as needed.
With your 3-Year Picture™ laid out, now you can figure out what you will do over the next year to get there. Your time should start focusing on the year as a whole, where do you want to be and what do you want to see. Each person should write down what they think the most important objectives will be and then share these with the group. Go through the process of keep, killing, and combing these as necessary until you find the most important 5-7.
Establishing New Quarterly Rocks ~2 hours
Your discussions from the 1-Year Plan should help direct the team to establish the Q1 Rocks. Ensure they are SMART to set your team up for success in 100% complete. Only choose Rocks that MUST get done next quarter. Also set your Revenue, Profit and Measurable goals within Ninety in the 90 Days section of the V/TO.
Solve your Issues ~3 hours
Now time to tackle your issues just like you do every week. Work through your list, creating to-do's and solving issues. Be sure to take notes so you can go back through in the future if needed!
Next Steps & Conclude
Tell the team to start working on creating their departmental V/TO and decide on when and how you will give your annual update to the company. Be sure you share Core Value call outs, and the new V/TO so the entire company feels aligned.
Add these next steps to your to-do list, and have your team share their feedback, expectations, and meeting rating (1-10).
After your 2 days are up your team should feel aligned, held more accountable, and entire company more aware of how they can help drive your company towards your Long Term Goals.
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