Dear Reboot: Vision & Annual Planning that Sticks
What to think about (and clarify) before you embark on planning for the future.
In our Dear Reboot series, Reboot coaches aim to provide guidance on common leadership dilemmas. If you’d like to submit a question to be considered for our Dear Reboot column, email us here.
Dear Reboot,
I have a vision for the new year for the company that I’m excited about. How do I get my team on board, involved, and strategically planning for this? I’m worried that they will think this is a high-falutin idea and will shoot it down or won’t jump at it. How can I organize the team better around annual goals and planning?
Steven
Dear Steven,
Your job as CEO is to have and hold the vision and make sure it’s understood by everyone in the organization. This clarity helps the team and functions within the organization know what they’re aiming for all together. Annual planning takes a little finesse but is fairly simple in concept. A well-executed annual planning session also sets the stage for accountability throughout the year.
What you specifically need for your organization will vary depending on the size of the team, stage of growth, and how much of the planning, interpersonal, and communication structure is already in place within your organization’s culture. We’ve rallied some favorite client resources on this topic, a few ways to approach vision and planning sessions, and what to think about (and clarify) before you embark on planning for the future.
The Advantage by Patrick Lencioni is considered a good basic approach to vision and planning. (Here is a rich page of resources to check out this framework based on clarity — something we can easily get behind.) A few clients swear by the process laid out in Verne Harnish’s book Scaling Up: How a Few Companies Make It…and Why the Rest Don’t. Some clients will also utilize coaches to help implement whatever annual planning and strategy process they decide to use.
One piece of wisdom most folks might miss is the importance of doing a past-action, retro-type process on the previous year before they begin embarking on the next year’s planning. Based on the transitions work that we do with clients, we approach this with the knowing that endings have to come before new beginnings. Properly looking over the past year, sussing out what went well, what we’d like to see more of, and what we’d like to carry forward, helps to bring closure to what came before and begin the process of looking out and forward to the new year ahead.
Once you’ve looked back and taken stock of what you’ve learned, the time is ripe to recommit yourself to your company’s values and priorities. Evaluate your mission statement, vision statement, core values, financial information (including budgeting), and key problems and issues.
Once you’re ready to look ahead, one way to approach vision and planning that we keep in our back pocket works for teams of up to about 30 people. It’s a seemingly simple way to roll out an annual planning session that goes a bit like this:
Start by emailing the exec team the vision for the year.
Then, call a meeting to order with a very small number of slides prepared. The slides should be very simple:
- Slide One: What’s the vision?
- Slide Two: What’s the mission of the company?
- Slide Three: What are the purpose of each of the functions of the organization?
- Slide Four: What are the commitments of each function for the year in light of the stated vision?
- Slide Five: What are the needs of each function to meet their stated commitments?
For this approach, slide stages four through five hint towards the execution of this vision without you, CEO, doling out the answers. Letting the team use their awareness, savvy, and perspective to see and articulate what they see as the plan to get there and what’s needed to arrive there, sparks clarity within each function and also clarity for cross-functional needs.
By allowing the team to discover the roadmap to the stated vision brings their wisdom on board, versus receiving a directive (or directions) from on high. A good leader will ensure there’s focus and prioritization and will facilitate any conversations necessary to maintain that clarity without singleness of vision. This process also assumes everyone is abundantly clear about their role, the role of their function in the organization, and their job description.
While this seems simple in approach, as when there are humans involved, there is a need for good listening, asking open and honest questions, emotional regulation, ways to talk through conflict, offer feedback, and make proper commitments.
The larger the team gets, the more complex the planning process becomes. Here’s a great post from First Round Review on a process we can get behind: The Secret to a Great Planning Process — Lessons from Airbnb and Eventbrite. In it, they note:
“Planning is hard because it’s inherently different from other exercises your organization takes on. Rather than focusing on day-to-day execution, it requires a large number of people to think about a variety of possible futures, align on one single future, and then plot a concrete course to get there. Taking this on for your own personal goals (for example, a New Year’s resolution), feels challenging enough — doing this with dozens or thousands of people can feel nearly impossible.”
Yet, while it can feel nearly impossible at times, there are tried and tested ways through that work. Overall, your company’s organizational health points to the success of well-executed vision and annual planning sessions.
