The Secret to Successful Annual Planning

October 2, 2017

High-performance senior leadership teams have discovered the secret to developing a successful Annual Plan – intentionally engaging emerging leaders in the process. At Gazelles, we refer to this as the Pre-Annual Planning Accelerator Session. This session brings together your emerging leaders, where you will identify and include them while further training and developing them in collaborative business planning.

The collaborative session works in small groups to provide frontline feedback and perspective to the senior team on your Annual Plan:

  • SWOT – Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats
  • Core Values – Are they alive and well? Who exemplifies them?

                   • Start, Stop, Keep – How can we make our company more efficient, effective and/or productive?

  • Top 5 Priorities – Can you agree on what these might be for the upcoming year?
  • An executive briefing to the senior team in each on each of the items above, with interactive discussion among participants
  • ‍A post-session “team time” for further team and relationship development

The result is a more effective senior team annual planning process with a greater portion of the time invested in growth strategy and people development. Additional results include:

  • An energized group of emerging leaders who have contributed to your Annual Plan
  • Greater ownership of your Annual Plan among emerging leaders and their teams
  • More senior leadership time spent working “on the business” rather than “in the business”

Interested in learning more? Bring your leadership teams to my annual Gazelle’s Scaling Up Workshop this November where we will cover this subject extensively. Registration includes a free consultation before or after the workshop. Register here.