Execution With a Regular Rhythm

Are you thinking about how to grow your business with near and offshore staffing? But you're also wanting to make sure that it's reliable, cost effective and really well done? I think docsa talent is the way to go. Here's why. They don't just fill your jobs. They bring integrity, top talent, and a people first approach that's hard to find. I've known the people at Doxa talent for over 20 years now and I say that you can count on them. I have talent. Talk to Doxatant and you won't be disappointed. Go to doxatant.com Bill G Again, that's doxatant.com BillG. One more time. Doxatalent.com Bill G Check it out today. All right, so there's an ideal rhythm for running your business. Good execution is rhythm like clockwork, like a metronome. There's a beat to it, right? It's regular and consistent and great execution has a great rhythm. It's really about talking about reviewing things, about the meetings that we do and the planning that we do. And it ought to be proactive and consistent. And that is not the way that I've always done it. I remember years ago on a corporate job having to create annual plans and then do quarterly reviews. So we do our annual plan, we'd make the pitch, we'd get our funding, we'd sign off on our numbers and we'd be on the hook for those things for the year. And we do quarterly check ins on it. But we weren't always doing quarterly planning. And then when I started doing business for myself, I started doing an annual plan. And what I noticed is that about mid year we'd either forgotten parts of the plan or they weren't relevant anymore because things had gone considerably differently than expected. So I introduced a mid year. So I would do an annual plan, a kickoff, and unfortunately it was often a little bit late, but we wouldn't get through the first quarter without having our plan done. So somewhere between December and February we'd create our annual plan and then we'd start operating. And then somewhere around the middle of the year we'd throw in a mid year update and we'd reset and we'd replan to finish out the year. And that really improved things and helped us to center. But it still wasn't right. And what we really didn't do until much later was get to that quarterly cadence where we create an annual plan, we update the strategy once a year, refine it. Right. It doesn't change that much. But we refine strategy a little bit for the year ahead. We create some annual initiatives and then each quarter we create a plan and we execute for a 13 week of the quarter against that plan before we plan, review and plan again the next quarter. Well, those are all the great things. And we also did the daily huddle, and that was really useful. But there's a whole actual sequence of it. Annual strategy and planning work, quarter by quarter, plan updates, and then a meeting. Every day is a great thing to stay in sync. But we want also a weekly meeting where we get on the same page and we actually see how are we doing on the quarter things. Because very often we will have forgotten to work on things. We'll get displaced by breakdowns, by problems, by emergencies. And we want to tend to those things that we said for the quarter that were really important. So the way we keep those alive is with that weekly meeting where we review progress on things and we nudge everything forward. We help each other and we focus on the things that are critically falling behind. So that's kind of the ideal cadence or the core of it. And then the last thing is you got to get proactive. So if you're always looking after everything else, after all the emergencies and everything else for where to fit your weekly meeting, where to fit your quarterly planning, when to do your annual. You will always be behind the gun. There will never be a convenient time that works for everyone. You'll leave people out of the process that you'd like to be in the process. You'll be scheduling around clients versus the other way around. And the key is this. You want to actually design and think about when is the annual, when is each quarter? Is it the beginning, the end of the quarter? Where does it straddle that quarter turn? What's ideal for me, what works. Some teams, they want to know the numbers really accurately, fully before they plan the next quarter. Others want to start the quarter with a plan in progress, even with a projection of the numbers in doing their review. For the it doesn't matter. Whatever works for you, getting consistent and proactive about it. So you figure out the ideal time, you book it in the same thing with your weekly meeting, your daily huddles. What's the ideal time for a daily huddle? Right, that's just 10 to 15 minutes a day to sync up. What's the ideal time for a weekly meeting? That's 60 to 90 minutes. The annual planning is going to take you anywhere from a half a day for a very, very, very small company or sol to several days for a larger fast growing company. And your quarterly is going to take you anywhere from a half a day to a couple days, depending on the size and the rate of growth for the company. And then once a week you got to do somewhere between an hour and hour and a half of just check in update on the quarterly plan. We got proactive planning sessions that are going on every quarter. They're scheduled, they're in the calendar for the whole year. And then we have the weekly meeting that's typically on a Monday or Tuesday. And then we have the daily huddle. And we of course don't do a daily huddle on the day that we do the weekly meeting. That one subsumes the other. But that is kind of the core of it. There's some other kinds of things that you might do all hands, once a month, one on ones, that kind of thing. But that really accomplishes a lot of it. If you get that in now, in the here and now, they don't exactly fit. But if you schedule it out like repeat proactively in perpetuity and just kind of put it as a recurring meeting, then you'll start to schedule your clients and other things around that instead of finding for the core running of the business to fit in with everything else. And it'll make a real difference. So get the rhythm right, dial it in, get proactive and start to work your thing around it. Pretty soon your business and other meetings will work around it. As long as you honor and respect that matters, it comes first and we fit clients in around that. I hope that's been helpful for you. My name is Bill Gallagher. I'm the Scaling coach and host of this Scaling Up Business podcast. Our show comes to you every week with something to do with your leadership, the people, the strategy, the execution cash of the company and how you run it, how you scale it up. If it was helpful for you, like it, subscribe, turn on notifications, get it every week. And if you want to see here any of the past 400 plus episodes that we've done on this the last number of years, you'll go to scalingcoach.com of course you can go right here, wherever you're getting this right now on any of the platforms. But go to scalingcoach.com, you'll find them there along with information about our coaching programs, we our workshops, boot camps, etc. That we've got to offer to help you scale your business to train your leadership team and get the business growing. I hope that's been helpful. You could also drop us a line to info scalingcoach.com and that's a good email address for us. We'll talk to you again next time. Keep Scaling Up. Are you ready to turn your goals into daily wins? You should check out our Scoreboard software powered by Align, it's the official software for scaling up. With Scoreboard, you'll get an AI driven coach for priorities and KPIs and it'll help keep your team focused on what matters most. With Align, you can track your goals in real time and you'll even see results on the go. With their mobile app. You can rest easy knowing that Align has world class onboarding and support to set your team up for success. This is really more than just software, it's what I actually use to manage growth in our scaling up client teams. Unlock clarity and results with Scoreboard by Aligned. To try it now, go to aligntoday. Com Bill G one more time aligntoday. Com Bill G that's aligntoday. Com BillG check it out and try it now.