Strong leaders create forums for effective dialog
Building the value, or worth of your business involves having a plan and aligning your team around that plan. A missed opportunity we often see relates to how a company owner or CEO aligns their key managers around priorities and general business performance. Having such discussions periodically, such as monthly, can help a team gel while facilitating much needed productive strategic and tactical dialog.
We see owners/CEO’s struggle with facilitating such dialog with their direct reports and/or key managers most often due to a lack of a quality agenda. Here is our recommended agenda to consider with your team for a monthly general business review:
- Red Flag items – opportunity for a meeting participant to share a business item of major significance. Any item raised here goes beyond the normal operating matters of the company as they are so important, they shouldn’t wait until later in this meeting. Most matters don’t raise to this level of Red Flag and many times there aren’t items to discuss so the group moves to the next topic. Red Flag matters relate to major legal or financial impact items or customer or employee major impactful items.
- Period to Date Financial Update – opportunity for the team to understand how the business is performing financially. Some teams will go through a very detailed financial review (P&L, Balance Sheet, Cash Flow, Forecast) while others may only discuss high level information.
- Customer Experience – opportunity for the team to discuss any significant customer issues or opportunities. These are matters that are in the normal course of business versus major ones that you might cover during the Red Flag agenda topic.
- Organization – opportunity to discuss matters related to employee health & safety, recruiting, retention, etc. These are normal course of business employee matters versus a serious matter that may arise during the Red Flag agenda topic.
- Strategic Priorities & Progress – opportunity to discuss key areas of focus for the business that each manager should be aligned in supporting. For businesses with more detailed strategic plans, this is the part of the meeting where the team discusses specific progress or barriers related to key initiatives.
- Key Performance Indicators – opportunity for the team to review the non-financial metrics that the team is tracking. These would include important Operations, Customers, Employees, Information Systems related metrics.
- Miscellaneous – opportunity for the team to discuss upcoming calendar items, customer visits, facility audits, facility maintenance matters, etc.
- New Business – opportunity for any matters that a meeting participant believes is of value for sharing with the team that didn’t arise during the prior agenda topics.
This agenda can be modified to suit your business. Move topics to higher or lower on the flow of the agenda and/or expand or reduce certain topics. Meetings of this nature are worth investing 90 minutes to even 2 or 3 hours a month toward. The key is building this cadence with your team utilizing an effective agenda to ensure your team is discussing strategic and tactical matters of importance. This cadence can serve you well in the long term by building a team that works well together and builds the worth of your business.
