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  You’re going to repeat that same Quarterly Meeting Pulse forever. You will find that the meetings keep getting better. With that routine in place, at the end of every year you will piggyback an extra day on the front end of your quarterly meeting for your annual planning. Annual Planning is an opportunity to build team health, reset the vision, and create a clear plan for the next year.

  THE EOS ANNUAL MEETING PULSE

  * * *

  Who: The leadership team

  Where: Off-site

  Duration: Two days

  Frequency: Every year

  Prework: Bring completed Vision/Traction Organizer, proposed budget for next year, and thoughts on goals for next year.

  * * *

  THE ANNUAL PLANNING AGENDA: DAY ONE

  • Segue

  • Review previous year

  • Team health building

  • SWOT/Issues List

  • V/TO (through one-year plan)

  Segue

  Each member of the leadership team shares three things: (1) the organization’s three greatest accomplishments in the previous year, (2) his or her one greatest personal accomplishment for the year, and (3) his or her expectations for the two-day annual planning session.

  The power of the annual segue, in addition to setting the stage and transitioning from working in the business to on the business, is that leaders have a chance to stop for a few minutes and reflect on the company’s successes and progress over the previous year. After the segue, one client said, “I was actually feeling like we had a bad year until I listened to everyone share the business accomplishments. We actually had a pretty good year.” This is typically the mindset after the segue, and that sets the tone for what follows.

  Review Previous Year

  Review the previous year’s goals, the previous year’s numbers (previous year’s revenue, profit, gross margin, and other relevant key numbers), and last quarter’s Rocks. You should be achieving 80 percent or better of your goals to truly be great. One of the ways you and your team will become better predictors of future events is by reviewing your results and addressing what worked and what didn’t.

  When you review your goals for the year, you must take the same approach as the Rock review. You want only black-or-white “done” or “not done” answers. This is one reason your goals must be very specific. If one of the goals for the year was “create a sales-focused organization,” how can you determine if that was done or not? If the sales goal was “$2 million in new sales from the sales team and $300,000 from account managers,” you can definitely determine if that was done.

  Keep in mind your goals were set a year ago. Most people’s memories aren’t good enough to remember what the intention was that far back. You don’t have to remember intentions if you have specific and measurable goals.

  There’s another reason to prefer specificity. You’re trying to assess how you did in order to determine exactly your degree of success or failure so that you can get better at it next time. When the results are vague and debatable, it’s far too difficult to see clearly what worked and what didn’t. You then rationalize your way into believing the year was better than it was. When you have no real way to pinpoint what to improve upon, you aren’t going to get better. So even if your first attempts to establish goals prove to be off the mark—sometimes way off the mark—keep trying. With practice, you’ll learn to set targets that are truly specific, measurable, and attainable, which will make you great predictors and ultimately lead to a solid, well-run, and enduring organization.

  Team Health Building

  Many great team-building exercises are available. You may already have one. If you don’t, I highly recommend an exercise I call One Thing. Each member of the team receives feedback from the others on his or her single greatest strength or most admirable ability and his or her biggest weakness or hindrance to the success of the company. The exercise is done out in the open, with the entire leadership team present. I believe the peer-evaluation methods that are conducted anonymously actually do more harm than good. This exercise has been done countless times with teams, and it always has produced great long-term results. Some clients have performed this exercise four years running at their Annual Planning Session, and the results get better every time.

  After everyone has received the feedback from their team members, each then must choose one thing he or she will commit to doing differently in the coming year based on the feedback. It’s short, simple, very powerful, and effective, and it leads to great insights with improved openness and honesty on the team. This exercise should take no longer than two hours.

  * * *

  A great discipline I’ve used with my clients to assure full delivery to their commitments is to do a quick feedback exercise in each quarterly session. Each person states their commitment, and every member gives one-word feedback on how they are doing honoring it. They state either “better,” “worse,” or “same.” It’s a nice tap on the shoulder, and it substantially improves follow-through.

  * * *

  SWOT/Issues List

  Provide an opportunity for everyone to share what they believe the organization’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats are. This is the classic SWOT analysis, a management tool for helping an organization take a good look at itself and clarify its current state, both good and bad. The most productive outcome of the SWOT analysis is the Issues List. Once you have listed everyone’s opinions of the organization’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats, you extract all of the relevant issues for the coming year and create an Issues List for the Two-Day Planning Session. This list, along with all additional issues added throughout the session, should be added to your Issues List for the next day’s Issues Solving.

  V/TO (Through One-Year Plan)

  At this point in the session, you challenge the company vision. This is the Annual Meeting Pulse, and nothing is sacred. Working your way through the V/TO, take a hard look at your core values, challenge the core focus, make sure everyone is still on board for the 10-year target, and confirm that the marketing strategy is still unique and valuable to the customer. Where you’re not on the same page, discuss and debate until everyone is in sync.

  Assuming you’re all in agreement, you throw out the old Three-Year Picture and create a brand-new one. You want to make sure that everyone agrees on the same image three years from now. Once everyone’s mind’s eye can see it, the odds are greater that you will achieve it.

  Once the new Three-Year Picture is clear, go to work on next year’s plan. Set the revenue, profit, and numbers for the coming year and then set your three to seven most important goals. Remember, less is more, so be careful. One-year planning rarely takes more than two hours. Don’t overthink it. When the vision is clear, the numbers and goals are right in front of you. You just have to put them down on paper and agree with them. In addition, make sure a budget exists to support the plan and that everyone is clear on their roles and responsibilities in the coming year. Let the Accountability Chart be your guide.

  * * *

  Some clients wrestle with the approach of throwing out the old three-year picture and starting with a new one. It’s important to take this approach for two reasons. One is that a full year has gone by and things have changed, so it’s important to take all of your knowledge and experience and incorporate it into a newly created vision. The second reason is that you’re smarter, better, faster planners than you were a year ago, and as a result, you’ll do much better work.

  If it’s important to you to hang onto the old three-year picture, I’d recommend that you cut and paste it into a document to hang onto personally and see how you did, but the above approach is what is recommended and most effective.

  * * *

  THE ANNUAL PLANNING AGENDA: DAY TWO

  • Establish next quarter’s Rocks

  • Tackle key issues

  • Next steps

  • Conclude

  Refer to the Qua
rterly Planning Agenda for details on the above agenda items.

  Annual Planning Tips

  • Many times, the one-year planning portion of the V/TO carries over into Day Two. Let it happen. You should not rush the process. You will have time on Day Two to complete the agenda if necessary.

  • Have dinner together as a team at the end of Day One. Seize the opportunity to blow off steam after a day of intense thinking as well as to continue to build team health.

  • Get away for annual planning. You don’t necessarily have to travel across the country, but a hotel an hour or two away will lead to a more productive meeting. When you’re removed from the office, you’ll be able to turn the real world off for a full two days.

  THE BUILDUP

  By religiously implementing the Quarterly and Annual Meeting Pulse, you create a 90-Day World that will reap tremendous benefits for your organization. There is a hidden benefit as well, one that I don’t even share with my clients. One of the main reasons that the Quarterly Meeting Pulse is so effective is what I call the buildup. With the prospect of a full day scheduled for the leadership team to meet, people prepare better for it without even knowing they are doing it. Their energy, fears, thoughts, issues, ideas, and excitement all start to build toward this special event. As a result, the meeting is much more effective.

  The opposite also holds true. That is, if you don’t tell anyone you are having a quarterly meeting and simply call them into a full-day meeting, the result will be less fruitful. There is no buildup. You must always pre-schedule your quarterly meetings.

  Many issues come up in the quarterly meetings that don’t typically come up in the course of day-to-day business. Countless times, when a touchy subject comes up in the quarterly meeting that has been lingering, others will ask, “Why did you wait until today to bring it up?” Often they don’t know why. It’s because of the buildup. It has spurred thoughts beyond the routine. People are more focused, energetic, and ready.

  THE WEEKLY MEETING PULSE

  The traction process continues taking the vision down to the ground. We are now narrowing in from quarterly to weekly. Implementing this step will really create traction and help you execute the vision. Once the quarterly priorities are set, you must meet on a weekly basis to stay focused, solve issues, and communicate. As you can see by the following model, the Weekly Meeting Pulse is your opportunity to make sure that everything is on track. If you’re on track for the week, then you’re on track for the quarter, and if you’re on track for the quarter, then you’re on track for the year, and so on. The Meeting Pulse, like a heartbeat, creates a consistent flow that keeps the company healthy. Put another way, the Meeting Pulse creates a consistent cadence that keeps the organization in step.

  ALWAYS A LEVEL 10 MEETING

  How would you rate your meetings on a scale from 1 to 10? The response is almost always somewhere between a 4 and a 5. That is simply not good enough. Most meetings in business are weak and not very productive, and yours probably are too. By implementing the ingredients of the Level 10 Meeting, you will raise that rating up to a 10.

  The Level 10 Meeting Agenda is designed to keep your leadership team focused on what’s most important on a weekly basis. Nothing is more important than keeping your numbers on track, your Rocks on track, and your customers and employees happy. The Level 10 Meeting is the most effective and efficient way to accomplish that.

  A weekly Level 10 Meeting keeps you focused on what’s important, helps you spot developing problems, and then drives you to solve them. What makes for great meetings is solving problems. Patrick Lencioni says it best: “Your meetings should be passionate, intense, exhausting, and never boring.”

  The Level 10 Meeting was developed as a result of being engaged by a number of clients to improve their meetings. The guiding principles are based on human nature. This agenda was developed through real-world trial and error and experimentation with many different methodologies. Today, all EOS clients follow this exact agenda.

  THE EOS WEEKLY MEETING PULSE

  * * *

  Who: The leadership team

  Where: The office conference room

  Duration: 90 minutes

  Frequency: Every Week

  Prework: Rocks established and Rock Sheet created; Scorecard complete; Issues Solving Track understood by everyone

  * * *

  THE LEVEL 10 WEEKLY MEETING AGENDA

  Segue 5 minutes

  Scorecard 5 minutes

  Rock review 5 minutes

  Customer/employee headlines 5 minutes

  To-Do List 5 minutes

  IDS 60 minutes

  Conclude 5 minutes

  Two roles are vital in the Level 10 Meeting. One person must run the meeting. This person will move the team through the agenda and keep them on track. Second, someone must manage the agenda. This person makes sure that the agenda, Scorecard, and Rock Sheet are updated and in front of everyone in each meeting. They update the To-Do and Issues Lists in the agenda each week.

  Segue

  The meeting starts promptly. Football coach Vince Lombardi was famous for his mantra that early is on time, and on time is late. Arrive a few minutes early so you can start to get your head in the game. The only reasons for missing the weekly Level 10 Meeting are vacation or death. Even if someone cannot make the meeting, the show must go on. Don’t reschedule it and don’t cancel it.

  Everyone should have a copy of the agenda placed in front of them. Your to-dos and your IDS Issues List should be included in the actual printed agenda. Your agenda should fit on one sheet so that you’re only managing one piece of paper. You no longer need to take meeting minutes. They should be a thing of the past. If you want to know what was covered in a meeting, check that week’s agenda.

  As a team, you share good news to segue into the meeting. As always, you need to create the transition from working in the business all week to working on the business, disconnecting from day-to-day affairs. It’s important to turn off all electronic devices so you can disconnect, take a deep breath, change gears, and get to work. In addition, the segue reminds you that you are all simply human beings in this world trying to create something great. This item should take no more than five minutes.

  Scorecard

  The Scorecard review is the leadership team’s opportunity at a high level to examine the five to 15 most important numbers in the organization and to make sure they are on track for the goal. Any numbers that are not on track are dropped to the IDS portion of the meeting, which is your Issues List. Avoid any discussion here. The reporting phase should merely identify problem areas. The biggest pitfall with most teams is that they launch right into discussing and trying to solve an issue. You must fight that urge and be disciplined. That keeps the meeting on track. There will be plenty of time to discuss and solve issues in the IDS phase, and the process will be much more productive when you’re addressing all of the issues at once. Scorecard review should take no more than 5 minutes.

  Rock Review

  Next, your leadership team focuses on your Rocks to make sure that they are on track. Review each Rock one at a time—first the company Rocks and then each person’s individual Rocks. Each person reports that his or her Rock is either “on track” or “off track.” No discussion—the discussion will happen later. When a Rock is off track, it’s dropped to the IDS portion of the agenda. “On track” simply means that the owner of the Rock feels he or she will accomplish it by the end of the quarter. Even if a Rock is on track but someone wants an update or has a concern, it should be dropped to IDS. Rock review should take no more than 5 minutes.

  Customer/Employee Headlines

  Share short and sweet headlines about any customer or employee news or issues for the week, either good or bad. For example, “Joe, our best client, is happy with the job we did last week,” or “Darla is upset with the decision on the new benefits program.” The good news is a time to pat yourself on the back. Any issues, bad news, or concerns should
be dropped to the IDS portion of the agenda. Some companies have a formal customer and/or employee feedback system. If your organization does, this is where you would incorporate that tool. Headlines should take no more than 5 minutes.

  To-Do List

  Review all to-dos from last week’s meeting. To-dos are seven-day action items. From a weekly review comes accountability. By incorporating this agenda item, you will accomplish more as a team. To distinguish a Rock from a to-do, remember that a Rock is a 90-day priority while a to-do is a seven-day action item. To-dos consist of the commitments people make throughout the week that typically don’t get captured. For example, “I’ll call the printers tomorrow,” “It will be shipped tonight,” or “I will have every prospect on the list contacted by Friday.”

  Quickly review each item on the To-Do List from a standpoint of “done” or “not done.” If the to-do is done, strike it from the list. If it’s not done, leave it on the list. Note: An action item should not remain on the To-Do List for more than two weeks, and 90 percent of them should drop off every week.