Many management teams fail to take advantage of the most strategic conversation available at year-end—the one that unveils the hidden gems of learning that can profoundly impact next year’s strategy and operational plans.
What is the crucial conversation, you ask?
It’s the year-end review of the past year’s successes and failures. Having this discussion with the entire executive team present and doing it thoroughly ensures that the gems of strategy are mined, extracted, and polished to spectacular brilliance, ready to be applied immediately when the year begins.
If the budget is already set for next year, the new year strategy has been defined, and they were not created with a full exploration of successes and challenges of the past year, then pull the team together and conduct the year-end review, keeping the following tips in mind:
1. Set aside sufficient time to complete the process—at least a half-day or, better yet, an entire day to flush out issues and implications.
2. Make sure the entire executive team is present. If that is not possible, waiting until the beginning of the new year is okay. It’s better to do it right, even if it’s a little late.
3. Ensure that all the issues are discussed, sufficiently explored, conclusions drawn, and decisions made. Hiring a facilitator to manage this discussion is a good idea.
4. Meet with each executive team member before the debriefing meeting to start mining the gems. This will prime the participants so they can dig into and think more about the most critical issues and have conversations with others before the meeting. This will make the review more productive and strategically relevant.
5. Discuss the elephants in the room, and don’t pull back if it gets messy or heated. Business is just as much about the people who operate it as about the organization, its process, strategies, and numbers. Those “hot” issues are the ones holding the business back, and they are a good reason to have the meeting professionally facilitated.
Completing the year with valuable new insights and new plans will allow your team to lead more effectively from the start of the year, and your Q1 results will be better.
