INSIGHTS BLOG

Providing insightful, thought provoking
&
ultimately useful information

Ethan Martin 10/27/22 Ethan Martin 10/27/22

A Checklist for Your Next Annual Planning Meeting (FREE Download)

When holding your annual planning meeting, you want attendees to focus on the important details of planning your business, with full attention and in a strategic environment conducive to the future-planning process. Last-minute planning of the meeting can result in an unfocused event. We’ve prepared a checklist for your annual planning meeting with tips and strategies to consider in organizing the finer details.

When holding your annual planning meeting, it is critical to conduct the event in a location that provides few distractions. You want attendees focusing on the important details of planning your business and not having their attention divided by their normal, day-to-day routine of checking text messages, sending “quick” responses and other similar activities that may be critical to getting things done, but are not conducive to the future-planning process.

So when it comes to planning the fine details for your annual meeting, you should exert the same focus you expect of attendees. Leaving the details of planning the meeting to the last minute can result in an unfocused event that doesn’t tap into the high-level participation you require.

Below we’ve prepared a checklist for your annual planning meeting, but also a few strategies to consider when organizing the meeting’s finer details.

How to Approach Your Annual Planning Meeting

Real-Time Situational Awareness: Your annual meeting is a collaborative affair, calling upon your CEO, your leadership team and a strategic coach to show up, be present and be at the top of their respective games. With all the changes and uncertainty in the world today, your leadership team is a critical link between your business and its customers, so be ready to provide them with the correct tools that will lead to strategic thinking and execution planning–and have them do the same.

Repeatable Growth Process: Preparing your team for a high-success meeting can also lay the groundwork for future meetings. High-growth companies can either create a lot of politics or build a repeatable growth process. We strongly recommend focusing on the latter.

Fun Process: Despite the critical importance of your annual planning meeting, it shouldn’t be a high-stress affair. It should be a fun event that allows your team to relax and showcase their best selves, without being on the defensive. Allow your team the breathing room to provide critical insights that can lead to future growth. A fun meeting also allows you to better see your leadership team’s “true selves.” which can provide key insights into which leaders are in the right roles for the next level of the company’s growth. This is an important insight, both for your team’s future happiness and also for the success of the company.

Download our Free Annual Planning checklist

Planning Checklist

Timeline:

Two months (or more) before the meeting.

Tasks: Select your annual planning location and finalize your dates.

Find a location that is inspiring, fits your culture and will allow you team to focus on the PLANNING of your business and not on the day-to-day details of working on the business

One month prior

Tasks: Select your growth coach.

Ensure there’s a good cultural and personal fit between your growth coach and your CEO.

Related content: Learn more about PFD Group’s coaching strategies | Why do I Need a Strategic Coach?

Five weeks prior

Tasks: Finalize and distribute a preparation survey to your leadership team.

Give your team one week to complete the survey. The survey should be mandatory for participants and also require input from their direct reports.

Three weeks prior

Tasks: Based on survey input, finalize a high-level offsite agenda and team activities.

Plan a general flow of exercises focused on three areas: Trust and culture; understanding changing customer needs to refine your unique and valuable strategy; and build a clear team and individual execution plan for the coming quarter and year.

Two weeks prior

Tasks: Confirm catering, finalize the event schedule and book any remaining travel that needs to be confirmed.

For the best value, book air travel no earlier than 45 days prior to travel and no later than three weeks before departure. After that, the airline recognizes the “urgency” of your travel needs and fares go up accordingly.

One week prior

Task: Send out final preparation questions and aggregated survey results to all participants.

Survey answers should be fully shared, but in a way that preserves the anonymity of respondents. Transparency helps drive trust and anonymity encourages more honest feedback. Both support the team in focusing their offsite time on the questions that will create the greatest value.

One day prior

Task: Coaching team arrives to complete the set up.

Night before

Task: Welcome dinner.

A welcome dinner, if possible, is highly recommended. Here you can celebrate the wins of the previous quarter and recognize your core value award winners, while also kicking off your strategy meeting on a celebratory note.

Annual Planning - Day 1

Focus: Culture, strategy and team bonding activity.

The first day is key. It needs to clarify and reinforce your team culture, trust, unique and valuable strategic direction along with time for the team to connect outside of the meeting room.
Related content: Vision Boarding: Creating Your Future and Your Personal Why

Annual Planning - Day 2

Execution.

Your meeting agenda should establish clear team and individual priorities and guide the meeting to capture key communication takeaways for the entire company. You should also finalize the quarterly offsite dates for the next four quarters. Remind your full leadership team that these meetings require mandatory attendance while also providing them with enough time to set these dates in stone.
Related content: Creating Quarterly Themes to Strengthen Team Morale

The next weekly leadership team meeting

Tasks: Share the key takeaways from the meeting; follow up by sending these takeaways to the entire team. Ensure all individual priorities are included in the software you use to run your business.

We recommend Metronome Growth Systems. Metronome software is optimized so you can work ON your business, and not spend time working on customizing off-the-shelf project management tools to meet your business needs.
Related content: Who Should Attend Your Annual Strategic Planning Meeting?

Ethan Martin 10/22/20 Ethan Martin 10/22/20

THE IDEAL TEAM PLAYER - HOW TO RECOGNIZE AND CULTIVATE THREE ESSENTIAL VIRTUES - PATRICK LENCIONI

In his book The Ideal Team Player, Patrick Lencioni provides actionable tools on how you should invest in your current team and hire going forward. At PFD, we share Patrick Lencoini’s passion for having healthy work environments. Since becoming CAPA Pro members, we have been able to share Lencioni’s foundational tools with our clients, and we have found that the ideal team player exercise has been worked well during this time of continued uncertainty. The ideal team player is a compelling framework for identifying, hiring, and developing ideal team players, talking about that these people are happy, humble, and aware of their impact on other people. The applications of this framework span all areas of life, from how we better ourselves, how we hire and develop our current team, how we parent, etc. It is an insightful and useful book, and we can’t recommend it enough.

TITAN: THE LIFE OF JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER, SR. - RON CHERNOW

Ron Chernow’s Titan creates a captivating portrait of an entrepreneurial giant - John Rockefeller. The biography details two sides of this imperfect but brilliant figure in history: one side being the businessman whose aggressive practices created an empire, and the other of a philanthropist who donated bountiful amounts of money and was committed to educating marginalized populations. We recommend this book during this time because we find that it is important to tell stories of really strong leaders of different times and draw from the lessons that they have to share. This book is relevant today, because it shows how one leader navigated a time of political uncertainty in US. Further, by reflecting on Rockefeller’s life, we can critically think about the legacy that we are leaving behind, incorporating Rockefeller’s brilliance and commitment to philanthropy into our legacy, but also taking heed to not repeat the more infamous parts of his history.

HOW I BUILT THIS: UNEXPECTED PATHS TO SUCCESS FROM THE WORLD’S MOST INSPIRING ENTREPRENEURS - GUY RAZ

This book from Guy Raz tells stories of entrepreneurial brilliance. Raz is the mind behind and the host of NPR’s podcast by the same name, and it tells stories of innovators, entrepreneurs, idealists, and the movements they built. This book is based off of that podcast, which is the top business podcast on iTunes, with over 200 million downloads to date. By telling these stories, this book offers insight to entrepreneurs on wisdom on how to overcome every problem, and it inspires us to strive for the same level of determination. We at PFD recommend this to our readers to broaden their perspectives and learn lessons from professionals who spent years learning these lessons themselves.