Podcast Ep. #53 – Our process for annual business planning (Part 1)

Today on the Academy I thought we could spend some time talking about yearly planning since we’re approaching the end of the year. If you don’t actually have a yearly planning session at your company, it’s understandable. It’s the end of the year, work has been building up, and you’re just trying to get things done and settled before taking a little time off for the holidays.

Yearly planning is important though. It’s your opportunity to take some time and give yourself permission to stop working in the business and work on the business. In this episode, we’re going to talk specifically about planning and running a two-day annual planning meeting with the leadership of your company. This will be a two-part series since the event is run over two consecutive days.

Yearly planning is something that many companies skip. I’ve been there because we all know that running a business can be all-consuming. We’re all just trying to stay ahead of the tidal wave of work and responsibilities every day. To actually stop working to work on the business for a day, let alone several days can be impossible and more than just a little stressful.

But taking the time to work on the business can be highly valuable. Especially at the end of the year when you have an opportunity to identify what went well, or what went wrong throughout the year and then make an effort to do things to improve and move beyond the status quo come the new year.

For those that are able to make time to work on your business, I’m going to recommend that you add some structure to your meetings. High-level planning meetings without structure can lead to a lot of unproductive swirling and distractions at best. At worst you’ll just get pulled down into a completely unproductive spiral that’s just a waste of time.

To help you make the most of your valuable time, let me suggest that you check out The Entrepreneurial Operating System, or EOS, from the great book Traction by Gino Wickman. I’ve covered this before in a previous episode if you’d like to explore a system to run your business. But today I’d like to detail the specifics around the annual planning meeting that the author recommends so you can add some structure to your planning and ensure that you’re maximizing your time with your leadership team.

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