How to…prepare for strategic planning meetings

It’s time to review your strategy again. One or two days away from the business exist business. It can be very productive or it can be a big conversation festival without clear or good decisions and commitment to action!

To avoid this, I recommend everyone to prepare for the best thinking, participation and decisions on the day.

Although it is difficult to stay away from action, the real villain is the lack of strategic planning routines and Good preparation.

In the process of expansion, quarterly disciplines are crucial. If done well, the team will work together to make strategic decisions, set goals, keep everyone prioritized, and work on taking action in the next quarter.

Here is a list of how you can prepare to avoid wasting time in the day or walking away in the absence of high-quality decisions and commitments, which actually brings you closer to your goals and long-term goals.

In the words of Jeremy Irons from the Sackney Lion King’s Sack – Be prepared.

Schedule your strategy meeting in the coming weeks to make sure you and your team have time to prepare (between everything else on the plate!)

Lack of preparation may lead many people to continue performing or operating tasks. This means making everyone’s days themselves take longer head and consider more strategic issues and transfer the changes faced by the business.

This also means people have more time Thinking and planning And bring more Fact-based information Conduct meetings, not on premonition and perception.

Finally, it highlights who has the energy of strategy on the team – not everyone loves it. In your team, trying to identify people with strategic thinking skills and could be a potential addition to more frequent strategic discussions held by the Strategic Committee.

When sending a date, you don’t necessarily need a detailed agenda, but it’s a good idea to keep in mind some key issues or areas to be addressed.

Perhaps these are related to changing tensions between customer sentiment, structure and culture, or how processes and automation can be simplified. Maybe it’s an unknown number of capital and working capital for growth.

Get input for these questions in advance through the following strategy. This gives you time to collect data and enter and finalize the agenda before the meeting date.

Data can be quantitative (e.g. net promoter scores, usage data, customer value metrics, financial data, employee surveys) or qualitative. I am a big fan of collecting qualitative data, such as having regular semi-structured calls or conversations with clients.

It can provide deeper insights, especially when we are not sure what we are looking for.

• How do customers deal with emerging pressures or challenges facing their industry?

• How does your company position your competition and expectations in the minds of your customers?

• How else can your organization achieve competition and competition in terms of its brand commitment and outperform? i.e. how your organization performs one or 2 jobs they need you to do for them, >100%, better than anyone else?

How many conversations should you have?

We don’t want to flood ourselves with semi-structured data at the same time, we want a good sample of a specific type of customer to view topics. If your business is relatively simple and you have 1-2 types of best customer accomplices, you won’t need many customer conversations to reach “saturation” on key topics.

Such conversations can be done effectively over the phone or online, or even recorded with the customer’s permission, so you can re-conversation later and extract key topics and quotes to share with your organization.

Discuss with your team about what customers tell us Nowis a wonderful springboard for brainstorming and keeps everyone focused and focused on serving their customers.

Once you have a good process, consider how to conduct such qualitative feedback collection and analysis procedures for the organization more regularly to learn and innovate “always”.

Many companies regularly collect internal and employee feedback by participating in a platform or pulse survey, e.g. culture,,,,, Officevibe Even through basic survey tools such as TypeForm, SurveyMonKey, and Google Forms.

Prepare strategies and priorities by sending a brief survey before the strategic meeting. I recommend you do this in attendees, but you can also consider sending the same survey to someone else in the organization or board of directors that may not be part of. Some companies also send surveys to suppliers and channel partners.

Gathering the input and knowledge of frontline and operational personnel from frontline and operational personnel close to customers, developing products or innovating new processes and technologies, and in frontline and innovative frontline and operational personnel in leadership roles or managing cross-functional project teams.

Before a strategic plan meeting, you may want to know examples of investigating issues;

• The strengths and weaknesses of today’s companies (not likely to change in the short term).

• They believe that trends are affecting the industry, customers, channels, geography, resources or technology that are widely used in your business.

• Your company can do one different thing to accelerate your long-term goals/purposes.

• Your company should prioritize one thing in the next quarter.

Usually, how different everyone’s responses are and reinforces the importance of a good strategic plan for team consistency.

Here is an example of a prepared survey to send to your team to gather opinions on brand commitments, SWTs and priorities. Test it yourself.

It’s also a great time to understand what your employees and other internal stakeholders think the company is doing in achieving its goals and core values.

Take some time to review your current strategy. Often, we have a “set and forget” mentality about long-term strategic elements (such as purpose, core values). For example, take some time to collect feedback from employees, board of directors, and leadership, such as through inquiries;

• At a scale of 1 to 10, how do they think your organization is doing in living up to its effectiveness Core Value Yes Purpose/Vision.

• If less than 10 – what can your company do to better achieve its core values/purposes.

You can bring responses into the first part of Strategic Planning Day to keep the leadership team strategically focused, not just execution or operational.

One way to plan a strategy meeting is to evaluate the maximum growth opportunities for your organization. this Extended evaluation If you are a great way to do small and medium-sized business or scale up, it is a great way to do this.

this Extended evaluation Specific to your organization, designed to identify your greatest opportunities to expand. Extended to provide evaluation Free Organizations dedicated to scaling.

The assessment covers 32 issues covering all areas of the business, including people, strategy, culture, operations, processes, technology, data, organizational routines and leadership. It can be sent to anyone, but it is recommended that the CEO and leadership team be started.

In the same industry, other companies of size and size provide benchmark results with other companies. and CEO results and team average. This helps team alignment to understand current situations and performance opportunities.

We usually recommend every CEO and leadership team to execute Extended evaluation At the start of any expansion of coaching engagement. This helps prioritize coach engagement programs, including strategic and program convenience, first and foremost the biggest expansion opportunity within your organization. You can try it for free – just click on the link below.

We want to create the best environment for the diversity and strategic thinking we can do. One way is to collect external impulses from people outside the company.

Expanding founders often find it useful to have regular conversations with other CEOs and leaders in other wider industries. or leaders/operators of organizations with similar business models and the previous several stages.

Another way to provide external impulses and inspire strategic thinking in the team is to compile some pre-reads or resources and spread them before the meeting.

Articles or videos that you want to highlight or challenge the trend topics faced by an industry or organization. For example this article Clayton Christensen completed the theory Valuable pre-reading before discussing customer strategies and differentiation.

External moderators such as Strategy Program Moderators or Expansion Coaches can help by providing new methods and tools to develop strategies or solve problems.

They can also do more heavy work to make the most of the strategic planning workshops so that the entire team, including the CEO, can focus entirely on the discussion and contribute in the same way.

The Extended Coach will also provide guidance on preparations and meaningful feedback and guidance during the meeting to develop your strategy, plan and decisions.

Whether your next strategy or planning meeting is targeting 40 or 40 people, proper preparation will help ensure that everyone thinks strategically and makes better decisions during the meeting. The coach will help you plan, such as determining who should be invited, what to prepare for, and how to develop an agenda to achieve the outcome you are seeking.

During the day, coaches can facilitate, bringing new knowledge to methods and tools to get the best strategic thinking and decision-making from the team.

Ask one Expand coaching to promote your strategy meeting C-level was released to fully participate in the discussion. Rather than having to do things among the guardians of time, promote discussion, manage logistics and contribute to strategic decisions and discussions.

If you would like to provide some support to prepare and facilitate the next strategic planning meeting, please contact me below. I’m happy to help you.