Ep 418 | 5 Steps to Creating an Annual Business Plan that Lasts Past March!

Thank you for joining me today. It's Brian Gubernick, and welcome to the No Days Off podcast, where we believe that every single day brings a new opportunity to get better. It is nearing the end of the year, which means that if you're a business owner, you are likely thinking about next year, planning around next year, probably sitting down mapping out your annual plan. It's that time, usually around this time, right? Like November or so, maybe even a little earlier. Some of you have already gone through this exercise. You start building out that business plan. Some of you have incredibly robust business plans, others have a one-pager. Doesn't really matter. We're all thinking about planning. But there's one thing that unfortunately a lot of our past plans have in common. And that's that as awesome as the plan was and as exciting as it was in creating it and as excited as you were to launch it, so many plans die out by February or March of the next year. Literally, they make it a month or two before that plan is shoved into the drawer and forgotten about. Why is that? I think there's lots of reasons for it. Some things that come to mind for me Maybe you start off poorly, right? Like it's an underwhelming start to the year and there's already a distance between where you want to go and where you've started. And you're like, well, the heck with this. Forget about that plan. We've got to, we've got to rewrite. We've got to regroup. Or maybe, you know, you wrote a plan, but then it was a lot of strategy without a lot of tactics. In other words, there weren't action steps to putting it into play. And as a result, it was a great document with lots of words, but it wasn't actionable. There's lots of other reasons as to why this may be. But again, I think we've all been in positions where we wrote out these plans and just a few months into the year, the plan was already, was already dead. What, we weren't even looking at it. So what can we do differently? How do we create what I would say is a living, breathing, business plan? How do we keep our plan relevant and actionable throughout the year? Some things I think we could do— as a matter of fact, 5 things I think we can do. While I think it's great to come up with an annual plan, the reality is we probably work better in 90-day sprints. So while I want you to annually plan, number 1, to keep it— to keep a plan you know, relevant and, and high energy. Set quarterly milestones. Set reviews of those quarterly milestones. In other words, break down your annual plan into quarterly milestones that give your team, give your company smaller, clearer targets. Schedule a quarterly review meeting that's dedicated solely to assessing progress. And if necessary, you could adjust tactics and you could reenergize the team around the revised or upcoming goals. This sort of cadence, in my opinion, maintains accountability and it allows for agile adjustments. Said differently, when we're not looking at things in terms of 90-day sprints and we're only looking at it, a 12-month plan, sometimes we look at that and we're like, well, we have time. You know, I know the first month or two it didn't take off and I'm losing some energy, but we still have 10 more months to make it happen. And I get it, but that's why I advocate for the quarterly milestone, or what many would refer to the 12-week year. In other words, you're segmenting that annual plan into 4 quarterly installments, and each one of those quarterly installments has a life and a history of its own. So number 1 way to create more energy around your, around your business plan and make it a living, breathing document: set quarterly milestones and reviews. Number 2: assign ownership of key objectives. So designate certain individuals or small teams within the company to own specific objectives. I would say create a throat-to-choke —don't love the phrase, but when I say it, everyone knows exactly what I mean. Who's the owner of the objective? What we're trying to do is increase engagement, and one way to increase engagement is to increase accountability. Why? Because each person or each team has a very clear role in pushing forward the plan's core areas. So when you regularly check in with these owners, you can ensure progress. You could spotlight any emerging issues. So assign ownership of the key objective. So it's not just about strategy. It's not just about the tactics that follow that strategy, but it's about assigning ownership over those objectives, having a throat to choke, increasing engagement by increasing accountability. Number 3, create a dashboard for tracking. You gotta have some sort of scorecard. So I think you got to implement a dashboard that visually tracks your key performance indicators, your KPIs, the things that are tied, the metrics that are tied to your business plans, goals. When everybody can see an ongoing process and they could see the gaps in real time, it creates a lot more focus. It reinforces focus. It motivates action. So we have to have a visual. And I think this is one reason, again, why business plans run out of steam. It's because there isn't tracking, or, and if there is tracking, it might be done in private. And I want to encourage public tracking through dashboard. So number 3, create a dashboard for tracking progress. Number 4, in order to create a business plan that's living and breathing and has energy, highlight wins and learnings on a monthly basis. So what I want to encourage you to do is set aside time each month to recognize the successes and to discuss the lessons learned. See, this culture of, of sharing progress and challenges, it— what it ends up doing is it keeps the plan top of mind. It reinforces this growth-oriented mindset. But just this constant talking around the plan in terms of both highlighting the wins as well as recognizing where You know, there's, there's some things we've learned and there's opportunities for improvement. It keeps the plan top of mind. Again, one reason things die out is because they're the opposite of that. We forget about them. And then lastly, number 5, I think if you want to create an active annual plan, embed the plan into your weekly meeting somehow. In other words, regularly reference the plan's goals in your weekly one-on-one meetings or your weekly team meetings, even if it's brief. So whether you're discussing individual performance or team metrics or new opportunities, figure out a way to tie the conversation back to the annual plan because it helps sustain that alignment. So when you take these 5 steps, I believe that your next year's plan can become a much more practical tool, a tool that really kind of energizes your team and it evolves with the business throughout the year. So the focusing question for you today: of those 5 steps, which of them do you think you need to implement, if not all 5, in order to create more energy around your annual plan this year than what you've experienced in years past? How— second question— how will implementing these things change the energy, the excitement, the use, the alignment to the plan. That's all I have for you today, the No Days Off Podcast. Thank you so much for listening, and remember, every single day brings a new opportunity to get better. So let's get after it.