Better Business, Better Life – Issue 223

Day One Is Not Just Preparation for Day Two

The first day of annual planning is incredibly important.

You review the previous year & the previous quarter. You look honestly at what worked, what did not work, what you achieved, what you missed & what you have learnt.

Most leadership teams are very quick to move on to the next challenge. They rarely stop long enough to properly reflect on the year they have just had.

That review matters because there is little value in setting a new plan if you have not learnt from the old one.

But the most important part of the first day is team health.

A stronger, healthier leadership team will communicate more openly, make better decisions, hold one another accountable & row in the same direction.

You can have the most beautiful business plan in the world, but if the people responsible for delivering it do not trust one another, challenge one another or work well together, the plan will struggle to survive contact with reality.

The Conversation Beneath the Conversation

I worked with a leadership team who initially questioned whether they really needed two days.

They were busy. They had plenty happening in the business & they wanted to get straight into setting goals, choosing priorities & building the plan.

I convinced them it would be detrimental to do this.

And during the team health work on the first day, it became clear there were issues sitting beneath the surface.

There were frustrations that had not been properly discussed. Some members of the team did not feel heard. There were different assumptions about accountability, decision-making & what the business genuinely needed from its leadership team.

None of those issues appeared on the original planning agenda.

Yet every one of them would have affected the team’s ability to deliver the plan.

Had we rushed straight into setting annual goals & quarterly priorities, the team might have left with a completed plan. It would have looked productive.

But they would have been trying to execute it with the same unresolved tensions, unclear expectations & unspoken frustrations they had brought into the room.

Instead, they had the difficult conversations.

They became clearer about what they needed from one another. They strengthened their relationships. They left the first day more aligned, more honest & far better prepared to make meaningful decisions about the future of the business.

That is not wasted time.

That is leadership work.

Your Long-Term Vision Comes Before Your 90-Day Plan

Once the team has reviewed the past & strengthened its ability to work together, the focus moves towards the long-term vision.

• Where are we going?

• What are we building?

• What do we want this business to look like in the future?

• What must be true for us to get there?

There are two critical parts to business planning.

The first is the long-term vision. You need to know where you are heading because, if you don’t know where you’re going, any road will get you there.

The second is the 90-day plan. You need to know what you are going to do next to move towards it. In reality, we can only focus on 90-day chunks at a time.

This is way more important than your one-year, three-year & five-year plans. Let’s face it, they are just guesses.

Without the long-term vision, your quarterly priorities can become a collection of urgent projects rather than meaningful steps towards a shared destination.

Without the 90-day plan, the long-term vision remains an attractive idea that never makes it onto anyone’s calendar.

Day one gives the leadership team the time & space to get genuinely clear about the destination before deciding what needs to happen next.

Why the Overnight Break Matters

At the end of the first day, the team steps away.

Ideally, they spend some time together doing something enjoyable. They have dinner, take part in a team activity, laugh, talk & connect with one another outside the planning room.

I always recommend something that is a little bit competitive & a bit different from what you would normally do, so you really start to see the true personal side of your team.

That time is not an unnecessary extra.

It gives the team a chance to build stronger relationships, but it also allows the conversations from the day to settle.

People continue thinking about what has been discussed. Ideas connect. Concerns become clearer. Questions surface. The brain keeps working on the problem, even when the team is no longer sitting around the table.

When everyone returns the following morning, they usually see things with greater clarity.

That is when the planning comes down to the ground.

The team can identify the most important priorities for the year, agree on the 90-day plan, resolve the critical issues standing in the way & leave with genuine clarity about who is doing what.

Trying to cram the review, team health, long-term vision, annual plan, quarterly priorities, issue-solving & accountability into a single day does not create efficiency.

It creates exhaustion.

By late afternoon, people are tired. Decisions become rushed. Difficult conversations are shortened. Priorities are chosen because the clock is ticking, rather than because the team has properly debated them.

Everyone leaves with a plan, but not necessarily with alignment.

Two Days Is an Investment, Not an Expense

Annual planning is not simply another meeting.

It is one of the few times during the year when the entire leadership team steps out of the daily noise of the business to work on its future.

If the business cannot justify two days to review the past, strengthen the leadership team, clarify the long-term vision & agree on the next 90 days, that should raise a bigger question.

What could possibly be more important?

The cost of two days is visible.

The cost of a poorly aligned leadership team, unclear priorities, unresolved issues & another year spent moving in different directions is much harder to see.

But it is considerably more expensive.

So, when someone suggests squeezing annual planning into one day to save money, my advice is simple.

Do not do it.

Protect the two days.

Do the work properly.

Your leadership team, your people & your business deserve more than a rushed plan created by a tired team watching the clock.

Is your leadership team ready to do its annual planning properly? Let’s have a conversation about creating the clarity, alignment & healthy team you need to make the next year count.