We've now done hundreds and hundreds of these one and two day planning sessions and wanted to share a few Best Practices at the beginning of the most important quarter of the year since there's still plenty of time to enact and execute on any change you want to make and realize the benefits of the change in Q4.
1. Use two days. With a specific agenda in place, give everyone homework to engage in in advance. Use the first day to bring ideas, and potential solutions to the table. Come together at the end of a long day for a non-work dinner...and wine. Use the next day to refresh, recalibrate and reconfirm the specific decisions going forward for the balance of the year.
3. Logistics. The best sites and most effective meetings are created in part by (1) the most comfortable chairs, (2) instant access to a variety of electronics, (3) lots of physical walking around room during the meeting and (4) food-built-for-meetings (low sugar, high energy, and delivered on time).
6. Preparation. Be selective about who is at the meeting. Talk to everyone beforehand to understand their own personal objectives for the meeting. Send out a draft agenda for comments and refinements at least a full week before the meeting. Give homework in at least a reading assignment, and consider having everyone send in a limited SWOT beforehand and sharing that with the entire planning team...before the meeting.
8. People. Keep the meeting attendance relatively small. We like to think that that number is around 10 people. At a company level, it's the entire senior team. For the senior sales management, it's all the regional managers, or maybe the regional and the field managers. For real team building, make sure that you invite the head of marketing also.
That number of 10ish provides great crosstalk and ensures that no one is left out and also keeps the meeting content manageable. It is critically important to the success of the meeting that the Facilitator talks individually with everyone prior to the meeting and understands one-on-one everyone's concerns and their own objectives. "So, at the end of this meeting, what do you want to leave there with?" is a great question for everyone to answer individually prior to the meeting.
9. Consistency. One meeting is a total waste of time! Get into the habit of building these meetings into the rhythm of your business whether that's quarterly, every six months or once a year. Lock those dates into your company calendar a year in advance.
10. Have Fun. This planning stuff is really tough work! It is also extraordinarily rewarding, but the very nature of the process is meant to take people out of their comfort zone and focus 12 to 36 months into the future. Make the meeting memorable by naming it, provide logo wear, give it a theme...or just do something to make the process fun and remembered. No, meetings like this do not have either the time or the purpose for ropes courses or walks in the woods! Those are very different type of meetings although for all or our meetings, and our two day Sales Management Boot Camps, we do provide 7:00 AM jogs for those who want to join in.
Hope that this helps with a few ideas gathered from 25 years of running planning sessions. Questions? Just connect.
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Jack Derby, Director, TEC-Tufts Entrepreneurship Center
Cummings Family Chair Professor of Entrepreneurship
Spark-Incubate-Accelerate@Tufts
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Cell: 617-504-4222 jack.derby@tufts.edu
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