As we enter the final quarter of 2022, the idea of 2023 is quickly becoming a reality. While we don’t know what to expect of the coming year, one thing is certain. CEOs and senior leaders should already be planning their business strategies for next year and beyond.
Planning for the future is not a solitary activity and business executives should be laying the groundwork for an annual strategic planning meeting that brings together your senior leadership team for a thoughtful discussion and planning session that will propel your business into the future.
As you start crafting the agenda and designing your anticipated strategic outcomes for your annual meeting, it is critical to spend some careful time envisioning your ideal attendee list. A misaligned attendee list can quickly derail any positive outcomes you might anticipate from your planning meeting.
Keep the Invitee List Intimate
A general rule of thumb is to keep the attendee list at about six to eight people.
With five or fewer people in the room, brainstorming becomes a challenge. People may feel too pressured to speak up if they feel people are judging their ideas. The more that one person becomes reluctant to share ideas, the more that tension could flow to other attendees.
On the other hand, if there are more than 10 people in the room, it can be difficult for everyone to be heard. Or for the group to find focus. With larger groups, conversations may drag on, which can leave less time to cover the entire agenda.
Having more than 10 people could also lead attendees to split their attention or slow down the meeting by diving into side conversations during the parts they feel aren’t relevant to them.
Bring Your Top Customer Service Expert
Planning for the future involves strategic task making, and these strategies should always be in alignment with the interests of your key clients or customers. While everyone in attendance should be knowledgeable about your customer preferences and market trends, at least one attendee should be an expert from your customer service team.
Customers are constantly shifting buying habits so the attendee who works most closely in fulfilling customer demands should be in attendance to provide the intelligence and to support the strategic plan by providing insights on the market you serve.
Inviting a customer service professional to the annual meeting is equally true for B2C and B2B businesses, as both must rely upon the ultimate shareholder–the customer–to support any plans for growth and expansion.
What Value Will This Attendee Add?
Not all employees–not even your senior leaders or A Players–are the right fit for all meetings. This is especially true for the annual meeting.
The last thing you want to have to happen during your strategic planning is to have a subset of attendees tune out the meeting because they feel parts are “not my area.” If there’s a likelihood they will become distracted and turn to surreptitious texting or emailing while others are speaking, then maybe they shouldn’t be on the attendee list to begin with.
When building your list of anticipated outcomes for your annual meeting, ask yourself what every potential attendee can add to those outcomes. If you aren’t able to clearly define their purpose, it may not be of value to invite them to attend.
A Cultural Fit
Like most companies, you probably have an employee who is a strong tactician. They are do-ers and love nothing more than checking things off their to-do list. You can count on them to get things done, but their vision for the future may not extend much beyond the task list just in front of them. This employee may not be the right to attend a high-level strategic planning meeting.
Similarly, there’s the person who believes anything and everything is possible until it comes to meeting deadlines. Then, work becomes impossible, demands are too high and it’s everyone else’s fault but their own that they’ve overcommitted to the latest project.
This type of employee may still bring their talents to the larger organizational structure, but may not be the right fit for your strategic planning meeting. However if their “it’s not my fault” behavior is persistent, you may also wish to reconsider your talent strategy.
If you already know a person will show up late or will present over-the-top feedback in the form of constructive criticism, or they will demonstrate any other roadblock to successfully meeting your planning objectives, you should listen to your own inner compass and exclude them from the attendee list.
A successful annual planning meeting means being strategic about inviting attendees that can and will hammer out an achievable, actionable plan. It is okay to admit that not everyone in your organization fits into this dynamic. Don’t slow down your own strategic planning by inviting the wrong people to the meeting.
Thoughtful Exclusion
While it is true that not every employee is a right fit for your annual meeting, it is also important to know that being added to the do-not-invite list may feel like a threat to the people who aren’t invited–even if they didn’t really want to attend in the first place.
Harvard Business Review has coined the term “thoughtful exclusion” on how to handle addressing the people who are excluded from any meeting.
“...in order to avoid the dreaded logjam of over-inclusion, the brain science makes it clear that, with the right approach, thoughtfully leaving people out could become one of the greatest managerial moves a leader makes.”
To keep employees, especially senior leaders, from feeling hurt or threatened by being excluded from the strategic planning meeting, have a plan to discuss the intent behind the meeting and why they might not be the right fit at this time.
Want-To Score
At PFD Group, we have built a Want-To-Score (™ pending), which is a designation that identifies the ultimate doers of any group. These are the people who are most likely to get things done. They have the grit and tenacity to not only see the vision for the future, but also have the vision of how to see the necessary tasks are completed to make this vision a reality
If you’d like to learn more about how to identify your Want-To players or how to build the ideal annual planning meeting, contact us for more information.