Time is a pressure everyone feels, and between new customers in Hangzhou, supplier opportunities near Istanbul, and a tight rollout deadline in Chicago, Stockholm, and Frankfurt your team has a lot on their plates and mention of a Strategic review has people fearing another Long Range Plan update or a massive slide deck to be populated and yet another KPI dashboard system to be installed on the desktop.
What can you do for a very quick Strategic Check Up in seven minutes or less which is actually meaningful?
A suggestion is as follows:
Ask participants to prepare brief answers to the following questions prior to attending the meeting and have your office compile for participation two questions:
- What are the top 3 external Strategic issues we need to be addressing?
- What are the top 3 internal Strategic issues we must improve?
In preparation- be clear that there are a maximum of 3 issues and they should be in as specific detail as possible. For example, “Market share” is not an answer nor is “Profitability." The issues need to be clear enough, yet described in one line, so that the management team can discuss. Once the issues are compiled,
→ Edit for duplicates and overlapping areas.
→ Pick the top 3 strategic issues.
→ Prepare those on one piece of paper.
During your Executive Leadership team meeting, identify the issues that were not already on the agenda and work through those; being sure to make a decision or delegate a next step to a specific person. Review the issues week by week. If you see the same issues repeatedly, you will know that the decision or delegation did not work.
This will become a maximum 7 minute per week agenda item. It will ensure that your team and organization are looking both externally and internally towards your strategic future and goals instead of getting bogged down in operational weeds.
This blog post was authored by Scott Newton, Partner of Thinking Dimensions Global.