Video Transcript

00:01 Hi everybody! It’s that time of year again when we have to start planning our annual planning sessions. So I share this video every year with both my clients, my past clients, and anybody else I’ve engaged with.  I’m just hoping and dreaming that you have a great annual planning session. My personal mission is to make sure that no great idea dies for the wrong reasons.

00:24 So I share this with you out of love and respect. Let’s get into it a little bit. So there’s a couple of things in this video so you can skip ahead or completely avoid it if it doesn’t fit with you.

00:36 We’re going to answer the question of why do we have annual planning sessions and get a little bit behind that.  We’re going to talk about how to build your agenda for your annual planning session. And I’ve got some great insight on that.  How to prepare everyone for a great session. So, you know, once you even have an agenda, you really want everyone to come prepared to do amazing things.

00:54 So I will talk about that. And then we’ll talk about what people get wrong. In when they have their annual session, including some of the more logistical realities around putting that together. And I got a bunch of free resources in here. Once again, certainly love to have you hire me if you haven’t done. 01:09 So already really this is really about making sure the world has more great planning sessions this year. So include some of the resources out there.

01:17  The an agenda-building template you can download, find a coach or session link so I can help you find a coach if you want to do that.  Annual session prep checklist. It’s a really simple checklist to make sure you’ve kind of thought through everything. You know, I’ll take all the stuff that I talk about in this video and put it in the list. Links with some organizational assessments are in there and there’s a some personal assessments and and then some additional materials on, on running grade sessions.

01:42 So let’s get right into it. Why do we do annual planning sessions? Well, the reality is that this is part of things that great. 01:51 Business builders been talking about since the 1950s, you know, all of the great writers on these topics have always said annual planning is something you should do.

02:00 And that has two parts. It is part of a regular state approach to meeting. Thanks for watching. You should do a standard set of meetings inside your organization, whether you’re two people or 20 million people around the world having a regular way of approaching this gives everyone great insight 02:16 into how to prepare for the meetings and how. Everyone else is doing. You really want to create that kind of synchronicity as much as possible. 02:23 And a standard part of this is figuring out once a year, dedicating yourself to the way out there. And we’ll talk about how much time we put out there based on some analysis and a model that we have for that. 02:35 Ultimately, it’s also about making sure that I have everything I’m doing today connects to what I’m trying to accomplish long term. 02:43 So we have this kind of model of this perfected path. Your path will not be this straight. Sorry about that. 02:49 But we come up with a just cause or a core focus or or, you know, that be had out there that’s way out there.

02:55 You know, something beyond the be had that that that vision that we have for the future of the future.  We will see you in the next video. I want to live in that’s beyond the horizon. Then we come up with some way of measuring that. 03:04 That’s maybe if your using EOS®, it’s 10 year target. It’s the BHAG for Jim Collins. Ninety has the compelling audacious goal, the CAG. But something out there. It’s relatively simple. That we’re all kind of aiming at right now. And then we start building in the picture with more and more definitions would get closer.

03:21 Just like like you’re looking at something down the horizon. Three year picture is a common thing in EOS®. Three year plans are a common part of a lot of businesses and having that one year plan, a lot of definition of the one year plan, because we should know to great extent where we are and how 03:36 things are going to go over the next year. We’re going to get better and better at that. So we judge ourselves and whether we get there. 03:41 Then ultimately we have a quarterly plan as well. So we want these things to cascade. We want to get down to the place where when I show up every week, Monday morning, the things I’m going to be working on are things that are getting me towards that long term goal and the best. 03:55 And the best way to do that is to really solidify those long term goals once a year. Now let’s look at this, the heart, our heart, your needs model.

04:01 Now, some of you might be familiar this from an individual standpoint. I’ll move my little floating head here somewhere so it’s out of the way. 04:09 But we talk about this notion of being say I’m out of the way again but survival is the same like the physiological need. 04:15 So if you’re in that survival mode, chances are you don’t have time for, for one year planning session. That’s fine. 04:21 But as soon as you get a sustainable place, that’s when you want to have that vision. You want to be a clear vision for one to two years out. 04:27 You should be able to plan that far ahead in general. So then we get to scalable, you know, between your planning a little bit further out, two to five years, achievement, you know, five to 10 years, and then we have the best model for the active, fully activated companies are looking at the 04:41 far out vision that really fit in time on that. And this is one of those things we talk about with with Amazon, you know, Jeff Bezos before we left Amazon was he was living in the future. 04:51 He was living in, he said, you know, he said, I have to make three great decisions today that impact this business 20 years out. 04:57 So he was living out there for you. You don’t have time to live out there. So the annual planning sessions about spending that time. 05:04 Working on that vision. And I don’t want you working all the time. I don’t want it coming up in your weekly meetings.

05:09 I don’t want your quarterly meetings. But coming up with a long term vision, the only time we give ourselves to do that is this annual session. 05:15 And that’s what Michael Porter and Kim Collins, all those guys really think that an annual planning session where we get everyone together, get offsite, and we talk about this stuff and really dig into it and spend some time on it is an important part of making sure that the work we do every day 05:29 is actually aligned towards a longer period. Long-term goal. So these three sections, if you’re in any of these three areas of the maturity model, this video is for you and annual planning should be for you absolutely. 05:44 So so there’s three types of meetings we talk that will, that we talk about in general. Once again, it’s one of the, I drew it in a weekly meeting is all about making sure that we’re, we’re gonna successfully have a quarter. 05:56 The quarterly meeting is really about making sure we’re making. Thank you. Progress towards our annual plan and the annual meeting is everything else. 06:03 So that’s the time when we reset the vision. We really came up with a long-term strategy, reset the three-year plan, all that long-term stuff.  This is the only time I want you to spend a lot of time. As a team, you’re going to prepare for the annual meeting.

06:16 I’m going to talk about what I think my suggestions are for that, but ultimately that’s really the point here. Alright, so let’s talk about it. Talk about the annual session planning agenda. 06:26 So in the quarterly session, if you’re not running on EOS or scaling up or any, any other 90 OS and the operating systems that are kind of published, you probably have some kind of. 06:37 Corely planning you do. I’m mostly using the terminology that comes out of 90 OS these days. We’re still going to be have rocks. 06:43 It’s going to be tools to go learn. But this is the standard agenda that my clients operate on for their one day quarterly session. 06:51 And it’s really mostly about Hey, how do we do last quarter? How are we going to do next quarter? You know, what are we doing to mature ourselves and then solving some issues to make sure we’re making we’re making progress.

07:01 Well, the annual session is two days two full day. That’s that’s the intention for the leadership team has done two full days. 07:08 And there’s a couple things to point out that’s different. So we have a team health section. You’ve got to spend some time. 07:14 You know, we, you know, we bake a little bit of time into the weekly meeting that built. We spent a little bit of time on it in the quarterly, but to really dig in and make those quantum steps towards being having a more healthy team, you should put some time into it. 07:28 It’s a couple of hours, maybe where you go through some exercises and I’m going to tell you what those exercises. 07:32 It could be in the rest of the video or they shall check up the, you know, EOS and scaling up and 90 OS. 07:38 All of these guys have some sense of being able to some model for how you strengthen the business. The things you should be good at it. 07:45 It’s business. How are you doing against that model? And I have some links to some tests you can take that all those are free. 07:52 The SWAT that’s the strength weaknesses, opportunities and threats, lots of versions of this and approaches to it. I’m gonna tell you just a few things about mine. 07:59 But that’s where you really kind of looking at the most outside the business and trying to figure out how to, you know, the context you’re in, how that is going to impact you and in what time frame that vision and plan section. 08:11 That’s what we do every every every quarter. Looking at all those things and vision plans and validating them and there’s validation questions. 08:17 If you don’t know what those are, that’s another going for another day. You know, put some time with me. There’s a link for that night.

08:23 I’ll tell you all about it. And that’s where we reset our three year plan. We’ll see you next time. Always pushing the envelope down a little bit. 08:29 We’re just at the moving framework where where are we going to be three years from now, three short years from now? 08:35 What do we want to have accomplished? What do we need to be to be on track to get to that? 08:46 And then we also set our one-year plan, you know, once again, that same thing, you know, like that, that path towards the infinity, one-year plan, one-year plan, one-year plan, one-year plan, one-year plan, one-year plan, one-year plan. What do we have to accomplish this next year to be on track to 08:57 get to our three years? Once we start the three year, what do we need to accomplish this next year? And that’s what really gives us a setup for having a great year and rocks that matter.

09:05 Rocks that are really helping us get towards that. Ultimately long term plan. So I’m just going to take a couple seconds at each of these sections here and feel free to jump ahead if you need to. 09:15 First of all, team health. We talk about this in terms of the Johari window. This notion that there’s things I know about myself and you know about me. 09:23 But I need to start unwrapping some of these other two sections. The blind section, the hidden section. So the because that’s how I’m going to build stronger relationships. 09:34 Better understanding of each other. We’ll know how to talk to each other. We’ll know what to expect from each other. 09:39 You know, so much of what goes on in, in the drama that goes on in, in, in many teams really comes from not having a good sense of everybody that’s on the team. 09:48 So we often tell personal stories. That’s a pretty simple one. There’s a one thing exercise that’s a that’s been shared for a long time where, Hey, what’s the one thing you can do start doing or stop doing to help, help the team, team be strong. 09:59 Five dysfunctions of a team. This is a Patrick Lynn, it’s the only book. It’s a classic. A lot of great materials around that for everyone to read the book and then to work through and make some decisions about, Hey, how strong are we as a team and what can we do to be stronger as a 10:13 team? How do we get rid of those dysfunctions? And then there’s profiling and we’ll talk. More about that, but really understanding each other from a, from a measurable scientific perspective. 10:22 You know, we have really good science and understanding people both from how we work together, but also how we hire. 10:28 And that’s just something you, if you want to be a great company, you’re going to have to hire a great. 10:31 People and the best way to make sure you’re hiring the right people in the right seats is to have some profiling as part of your, what you’re doing here. 

10:37 There’s a great link here later on for a trust score approach. So understanding where everyone is. As far as trusting everyone, that’s something not for the week. 10:48 Or, or for, for new teams. If you, if you haven’t ever done anything like that I don’t suggest it. It’s a, it’s a big one.

10:54 So let’s go into the profiling. So profiling options that I recommend. First of all, I don’t recommend disc. It’s very old. 11:01 It’s very simple, but it doesn’t really, it doesn’t tell you enough. It is relatively inexpensive. If you’ve done nothing else, at least do that. 11:08 So it’s, it’s better than nothing, but not by a lot. Kolbe is one that’s, that EOS® suggests. And it’s at four numbers there. 11:18 I’m showing you my stuff here. 8443 is what is me. And people say, oh Jim, I think you’re more of a quick start than that. 11:24 Well, I’m heavily modulated. It’s a quick start. Long story. You can ask about it all the time, but that’s actually been validated. 11:31 You can use it for hiring. There are tools for exactly that purpose. There’s Kobe ABC. I mean, there’s a full range of tools. 11:37 It’s a completely validated tool set. There’s no bias built into it that would keep anyone from being hired. It’s really, it sells the truth. 11:47 And there’s Typecoach, which is one of our favorite versions of the Myers-Briggs model. So you can see I’m an ENTJ there, some words around what it is to work with me. A lot of my startups have a lot of NTs in them. 12:01 And that’s pretty common because we tend to like to make trouble. That’s a great one. You know, very, very effective at helping people, you know, trying to figure out people out, not necessarily a great hiring tool, but a really good way to understand your team on a gram or print is another one. 12:20 I’m a one five also got a lot of information about that. And it’s also the oldest of them. It’s actually prehistoric and it’s in its, in its modeling, almost it goes back very long time. 12:30 We’re trying to figure out the personality types predictive index and the culture index is the last one. We’ll talk about how it’s validated. 12:36 It’s the newest of them. It’s the most modern of them. It’s a little bit harder to understand. You can see a picture of that ABCD model down there. 12:44 And and what that it takes a little bit to start to understand it. And there’s, but there’s great courseware in that, but it’s super, super accurate. 12:53 And also completely valid for, for hiring. So consider one of those. Also, one of the newer ones is this very simple tool. 

13:00 Once again, Patrick, let’s yell and he’s the math. He’s a master of this kind of stuff. He’s written a book called the six types of working genius. 13:07 And there’s a, as you imagine cause it always is. There’s also an online survey you can take. It’s only $25, I think, to take it, to kept you up there. 13:15 You know, which. And there’s also a tool to figure out what your team map is, who, who on the team fits well with with, with which person and do you have all the right people. 13:29 So it’s a, it’s a pretty good way to do it. It’s a good way of finding gaps. So and once again, the see there, the links are, are all at the end of the end of the presentation. 13:37 I also want to say that there’s great reason to think about if you are following one of these, one of the business models. 13:43 It’s pretty. Closely. It’s great to lean into their, their models. They all have models for figuring out how strong or how valid or how, you know, whether you have competency in all the areas that they think are most important. 13:56 That’s a great way. And I have something external to yourself that measures your progress towards being great at these things and really have having these competencies.

14:06 So I highly recommend those a couple of links there to both the period. And I also recommend the EOS model that EOS Worldwide provides and also won the Pride by 90, which is a little bit more wide open but both great tools for figuring that kind of stuff out. 14:20 Now, when you’re going to three-year planning, I want you to think about both, both, the one thing that people do make mistakes on with this is I want you to take as much, as many notes as possible. 14:32 You’re going to have the top of the, of, of that, of that model. Almost all of them have a, you know, hey, what are the financials for our three- and one-year planning? 14:39 And, but then also what’s the measurable sets are lacking indicators and leading indicators, but also you’re going to come up with, Hey, what do we need to accomplish in that timeframe? 14:47 And gosh, I really want you to get good at taking notes around these things. All of these things. There’s a place where people. 14:53 Don’t take advantage of, you know, we use 90 as a tool with all my clients and there’s a place for there to keep copious notes and attachments and links to things. 

15:02 Make this a place to gather the information so you’re never wondering about context. So SWOT at this point the couple of things, the only thing I do differently about SWOT really is one, I, I, I give assignments to people. 15:16 So, you know, all the strengths can be to have an owner and they also have a timeframe. All the opportunities have a time, have an owner and a timeframe. 15:22 So you’re in charge of dealing with that and tracking it and doing research on it and keeping, keeping understanding of it. 15:29 I’ve had great experiences where I’ve had clients who did a SWOT and were able to get rid of all. All their weaknesses over a couple of year periods. 15:36 Like, so they they hadn’t done it in two years. And I started working with her. Let’s go back and look at SWOT. 15:41 And we’d knocked out all the weaknesses because we did, we focused on making sure that we were doing that. So I think it’s a great thing to do at the only time we do that. 15:48 It’s at the annual. Okay. What people get wrong about their annual? So once of all, get off site. Everyone going back to the very beginning and Peter Drucker says you should get.

16:01 Change the scenery! Find some place that inspires creativity. You know, we do that in our session rooms. We’ve got games.   We’re right next to a top golf. We go down there. So there’s, we’re trying to find that place in your real life. 16:15 Not just churning your work. You know, there’s a lot. Jim Collins talks about you know, B2.0, where you’ve got to instill the opportunity for creative thought. 16:25 This is the one you want to do it.

Don’t over-engineer the timing. I have next, this next week, actually, we have our fur at the impact leadership center. 16:33 We have our first annual and those will go through March. So people for various reasons, we’ll time them at various times. 16:40 I guess I’m talking to a client today. We’re not going to do theirs. Until next July, they’re gonna have a July in itself. 16:46 The first time it’s happened. It’s not unusual. What’s the best time? What’s the most meaningful time for you to do annual planning? 16:53 And in your, your, your, your, your years can wrap. And so the beginning of the process for, if you’re, if you’re the leader of the organization. 17:10 Thank you. Thank you. You’ve got, you’ve got that. In mind and then start your planning for this year. You got to get everyone enough time to prepare and I’ve got to say that’s like I said that slide for that is linked in here as is the d***. 17:35 So you can, you can have that for later on the objective driven that agenda. So there is an agenda. You should have a plan for how you’re going to get through all the material, but understand what’s most urgent and important and it’s really having a really effective plan. 17:48 And quite often my teams learn the hard way that they need more than the time that they gave. Thank you. 17:52 Hey, we only planned a day. We really needed a day and a half. We only had two days. We needed a third day to really dig into all the things we’re working on right now. 18:00 That’s fine because it’s more important to have an entire year of effective activity of execution against a really solid planning cycle than it is to go fast with this and then going, you know, go all over the place when, over your next year. 18:18 You know we, we’re not currently in a, in a lockdown period, but certainly, you know, the best you possibly can. 18:24 The annual is the one time a year where I would say it’s almost, you almost have to have everyone together. 18:30 It’s hard to do this work over Zoom and to, to really get to know each other. And it really, you’re, you’re going to have a better team. 18:37 You’re going to have a better opportunity to build a strong strategy and a strong vision if you’re all together. If you’ve got more than seven people on your leadership team.

18:47 You’re going to have to add more time to your, to your schedule. And part of the the template I give you cause a reminder of that you’ve got to think about there’s some sections that are our per person. You’ve got to just add some time for that. And, you know, in general, this is another Jim Collins. You’ve got to, you, you probably have some people on your team that have no problem speaking up and they can go through a really quick meeting and be effective.  But some of the wisest people probably don’t speak up as much and you need to give them time. Otherwise they get frustrated.  One, and two, you miss out on their genius. So make room for everyone’s genius in when you’re planning this. And, and that means you just can’t, you know, bang through this. She did. You’re really going to give some time and some breathing space to make things work. Okay. And then I would suggest having someone facilitate, you know, so I do this every year where I help some people find a facilitator for their meeting.

19:40 It’s not as expensive as you think. A lot of the coaches like myself do have some facilitation rates that aren’t the same as my coaching rate because my coach might spend a lot of time with you.  I get really deep in. So you can really for a couple of grand. Find someone there’s really going to come in and at least keep you as the leader of the realization, not spending time focusing on facilitation and get through a much better meeting. Once again, it’s one time a year. It’s the only time you’re looking at some of these things. It’s well worth it.

20:10 So, I’ll go really quick through the resources here so we can get you out of here. First of all, I’m happy to walk you through this plan and help you with these things.  It’s part of my commitment to making sure that great ideas don’t die for the wrong reasons. It’s my help first hour, so it’s QR code.  You can see my calendar link down there. Feel free to take advantage of that as you’re able. Here’s my pre-work checklist.  It goes through all the things I can talk about today. There’s nothing here I didn’t talk about. It’s maybe the cleaning up your issues.

20:37 If you’re not working within an operating system, you might want me to tell you more about issues lists. Go ahead and ask that question. 20:44 But, oh, here, I’ll get my face out of the way of some of the words. But, but, you know, feel free to, you know, you’ll have a, a download. 20:51 Of this, of this d*** to play with to know what your to help you plan. I can help you find yourself a coach.

21:01  We’ll open can. So once again, I’ve got a very short meeting here that I can help you ask a handful of questions and figure out who I can send you to who can help you facilitate your meeting.

21:16 Actually, it’s well worth it to find a facilitator. At least consider it if you haven’t done it before, but please consider it.  Talk to people and like I said, it’s, it’s, it’s well worth it when you’re spending so much time in the room think about the money you’re spending with all the people that are there and, and they’re and you want them to be, get the most out of them.  A Facilitator makes it easier to be really efficient with this.

21:34 And there’s just a downloadable template here for planning your time. You can see all the things that are typically part, the timings are typically part of an annual session.  This is a two day version of that. So if you’re going to do less than that or more than that, you can adjust those timings and just figure out how that thing.  But, you know, thinking about it, you know, bit by bit. If you don’t have 90, this is a great tool set.  I use it with my clients anyway. Even though they do have 90 just to kind of talk through each of those pieces.

22:04 Last couple of bits here. One of the storytelling bits, I’ll keep moving around here, is this 4-H’s model where, and this is here for you as a resource. If you want twanthis, use this as one of your exercises. And there’s some more information about meeting cadences.

22:21 And lastly, make sure your departments are the same thing. So after you have your company annual, it’s great. Let the department do the same thing.  Usually, this is what it looks something like, where the leadership team gets together, they make their rock smart, they say to the company and the departments can do, can, can flow down from all that stuff.

22:38 And all these resource links are here. So that’s it. Hopefully there’s a chance. Watch this at 1.5 speed so you don’t have to hear me blab for very long.  Happy to help out. All these links are here for your benefit. Have a great annual and I’m here to help.  Thanks everybody.