5 Steps Steady Businesses Take When Engaging in Annual Planning
It is officially the planning time of year. I have multiple annual planning sessions for my various businesses on the schedule this week (and last week). I imagine many of my peers are experiencing the same. In that spirit, I thought it would be a great opportunity to share a broad format for the five things I do when I get into annual planning mode.
Talk about why we plan.
Remember, it is our responsibility as leaders to help our people understand how to think so they can be more productive for the business overall. Planning, creating and communicating vision, building and executing strategy are all “MBA-titled” activities that are really just models for how we should be thinking. You give your team these models so they can think the way you think so we can all get what we want in the end. Ultimately, when the leader thinks more effectively, it helps everyone remain steadier. Businesses and people can move through chaotic times without too much disruption when planning has been executed in detail. When you have a plan, you will move through the world with greater confidence, intentionality, and focus.
2. Conduct an After-Action Review (AAR).
Though an After-Action Review is first a military term and tool, it can also be thought of more simply as just thinking through a situation after it has happened. Quick summary of the considerations of an After-Action Review: What did we expect to happen this past year? What actually happened? What did we learn from that? And what we will do differently, as a result of these lessons learned, next year? When you think through the situation in this manner before you start to plan what you are going to do next, you better understand your starting point for all future actions.
3. Decide on your several key areas of planning.
You make yourself a more effective thinker and ask yourself better questions when you start by structuring your thinking/idea time into specific “blocks” or “buckets.” This forces you to think of more specific ways to gain progress in the different key areas of your business. My four key areas, generally, are: operations, lead generation, people, and finances. Speaking from my own personal experience, when I force myself to think through these areas, I generally come up with a great plan for each of these four key business areas.
4. Break your annual plan down into “big rocks.”
An annual plan always seems SO BIG until you break it down into “what I am going to get done first, in the first 90 days?” You must bring the most important tasks into those first 90 days so you can stay focused on what is most important. This also helps you curb those feelings of overwhelm and allows you to just get to work. And, most notably, you can get to work on the most important things first. Force yourself to be very clear on which initiatives are the “big rocks” for the first quarter of the upcoming year.
5. Make a decision on how you will measure progress.
Who is going to be responsible for these different initiatives? How and when will your team talk about them over the next year to ensure the job is getting done and you are accomplishing things at the rate the company requires to achieve your goals for the year (or for the next three or ten years)? There has to be a clear and documented way to measure progress and stay accountable to your planning efforts.
Remember these timely words from Tony Robbins:
“We must run the business of today WHILE we are building the business of tomorrow.”
It is possible to run the business of today without a clear plan. It is possible. But it is impossible to effectively build the business of tomorrow without a plan. Keep this in mind to motivate you to conduct your planning exercises. It is never too late to plan – and it’s also never too early to plan. If you haven’t scheduled it yet, get your annual planning time scheduled and start preparing for the business of tomorrow.
Written by Schuyler Williamson
Pre-Order The Steady Leader Book: Pre-Order Book
God Bless!
~ Schuyler Williamson