The team should already know what the next year looks like & have their financials prepared. Annual Planning requires having finalised numbers to work with—it’s ideal to have the results from that final quarter.
This means we can’t do it earlier; the team needs to complete the 90-day cycle, gather the real results, & then plan for the year ahead.
Any team in a regular 90-day cycle needs to complete the cycle, learn from it, & then prepare for the next 90 days. We want to discuss real results with meaningful insights to prepare effectively for the year ahead.
Most importantly, it’s about getting better at predicting & improving team health before we plan for the year ahead.
As Mike says in the book Fireproof, his law firm could predict within 0.01% of the results because they monitored key metrics weekly, using a Scorecard to track the right data & understanding the operational levers that influenced their outcomes.
This level of accuracy matters for EOS users because it demonstrates the power of data-driven decision-making and the discipline of weekly tracking to anticipate future results with precision. Because they monitored key metrics every week, using a Scorecard to track the right data & understand the operational levers that influenced their outcomes.
The clue is in the name—the Entrepreneurial Operating System. It’s an operating system that helps you gain traction on your vision.
And here’s the kicker: we don’t have to follow the financial year at all. EOS runs on 90-day sprints, not financial quarters.
Some clients get really anxious about this. They feel like everything needs to align perfectly with their financial calendar. But when they push back, I offer a simple alternative:
“Okay, let’s stick to strict quarterly dates then. That means our first session of the new year will be between the 1st & the 5th of January since the quarter ends in December, & we’ll need a few days to get the results ready.”
Cue the nervous laughter. After all, who really wants to swap their summer holiday for spreadsheets, strategy meetings & having difficult conversations?
Of course, no one in New Zealand wants to do that—the whole country takes a break over Christmas until around Waitangi Day. There’s no way I’d get a team into the office for an EOS session in early January.
So, if we’re not going to stick to exact dates for the first quarter, why stress about aligning the other dates with financial quarters? The flexibility allows teams to focus on results rather than arbitrary dates, ensuring better decisions based on real, up-to-date data.
The real goal here is to get the team superb at predicting—one of the five EOS Leadership Abilities: Simplify, Delegate, Predict, Systemise, & Structure. It doesn’t matter when the sessions happen, as long as they’re consistently 90 days apart.
So, the next time you’re worrying about matching your EOS sessions to your financial calendar, take a breath. Focus on the rhythm of the 90-day world & the discipline of meeting regularly—that’s what will keep you on track for success.
Annual Planning isn’t about your financial year – it’s about building a clear, actionable plan for the future. It’s about creating a plan & committing to the actions that will get you where you want to go.
And trust me—that’s far more important than any date on the calendar. 😉
