Welcome to the 33rd edition of The Pulse, your bi-weekly newsletter of Insights for Strategy Leaders. And welcome to all of the new subscribers since the last edition!
In this edition:
- ⚡ Accelerate Further, Recover Faster
- 🔦 Customer Spotlight: Maximizing Leadership Meetings
- 🍪 Strategy Snacks
⚡ Accelerate Further, Recover Faster
One of my favorite parts of my role is when I have the chance to meet with Strategy and Operations Leaders in person.
While some might see it as old-fashioned or unnecessary in today's world of easy virtual meetings, few things energize me more than a great onsite meeting.
Over the past few weeks, I’ve had the privilege of visiting with Strategy and Operations Leaders in Kansas City, Chicago, and London. ✈️ And for all those that I’ve met with, thank you for taking the time to meet in person. It truly means a lot that you’ve allowed myself and Elate to come alongside you in the process of building and executing your Strategic Plans.
On my flight home to Indianapolis last week, I was reflecting on some of the conversations I had been having with different Leaders, and one topic seemed to come up more than any others… 💭
How do we get our Leadership Team to recommit to Planning and keep it at the forefront?
It’s not that these organizations weren’t going to run their annual Strategic Planning offsite, and build a strategy to present to their Board of Directors, Shareholders, or internal teams. Nor were they going to sunset their weekly or bi-weekly Leadership meetings.
But conversation after conversation revealed one of two reasons this questions was being asked:
- Things are going great. The organization is experiencing exponential growth, and looking to keep their foot on the gas. We’re living in chaos, and it’s working, so is there a need to change?
- The outlook on 2024 is bleak. Leaders are discouraged to the point where they don’t want to revisit the existing Plan, because they're pretty far behind. Or, they don’t want to think about next year since the only thing that matters is finding a way to get to some specified number. At all costs.
Regardless of whether your organization falls into one camp or the other, or maybe you even sit somewhere in between, I think there is something deeper behind the question.
A few weeks ago I talked about the need to provide clarity in the face of uncertainty as we head into 2025. But I want to reshape that conversation a bit to help Strategy and Operations Leaders communicate the why behind the need to recommit to Planning, as well as the rituals to keep it front and center for Leaders.
For those that fall into the first camp. Business is booming. Growth is through the roof, and we don’t want to lose momentum. 🔋
Let me be the first to say—don’t lose that momentum. Harness it. Make it that much more powerful.
We talk about how a great Strategy can capture the electricity and energy from the Vision cast by the CEO and other members of Leadership, and that’s exactly what we want to do. 💫
We want to drive our bias to action and empower our employees by providing clarity to align their work with the company’s direction. Further, we need to enable them to more effectively work across teams and amplify their impact.
As our organizations grow, so do the challenges or potential risks. ⚠️
But by continuing to stay focused amidst growth, we allow our organizations to accelerate even further. We continue maximizing our impact to match the stage of the business.
On the other hand, we’ve seen companies lose the focus of Leadership because of a poor year.
The weekly Leadership team meetings become a reminder of how far behind the organization is, and no one wants to talk about it. Leaders are under pressure to hit certain revenue or profitability goals, and there just doesn’t seem to be a path to reaching those targets.
Yet, that is why we need to refocus on 2025 Planning and the way we review or adjust our plan now more than ever.
A football coach I once had used to say, “keep chopping wood.”
Even when things are tough, we keep going. Keep persisting. Because when the tide turns, we’ll bounce back faster.
By recommitting to Planning and its governance, we empower teams to control the controllables, reduce chaos, and make more effective decisions.
Related: Guide to Building an Effective Operating Rhythm
The companies that understand this will be the ones that minimize potential pitfalls and recover faster because they weren’t so caught up with today’s fires that they lost sight of the big picture.
They maintain a structure that allows their Plan to be dynamic—and serve as a living, breathing guide that is regularly reviewed by Leadership.
All this to say, I know it’s easier said than done.
But whether 2024 has been a tough season for your organization, the best year in company history, or more of the same, a commitment to Planning anchors us around priorities to amplify business impact.
And the review of our plan—with a structure and cadence—aligns our teams and provides the opportunity to harness momentum or weather a difficult season.
As I shared at the beginning, this is the type of stuff that is life giving to me. I love having these conversations with Leaders and supporting them, no matter where they are on their journey. As you and your team head into 2025 Planning, don’t hesitate to reach out if we can be of any help.
Our team is always here for you.
🔦 Customer Spotlight: Maximizing Leadership Meetings
Yesterday marked the end of our Blueprint Live series, and I couldn't be happier with how it all came to life.
In the final session we sat down with Lou Desiderio, Strategic Advisor and former COO at FormAssembly, and talked about how to make these ELT meetings more effective. So much time is spent on roll-call items like reviewing last weeks performance, and we do not spend enough time discussing how to unblock our teams for success. Lou has transformed leadership meetings at FormAssembly, and in this recording, shares how.
Here's a link to the recording
And if you want to check out the other Blueprint Live recordings (which I'd highly recommend heading into 2025 planning), here you go:
- Session 1: Strategic Planning Frameworks Best Practices Q&A
- Session 2: Measuring Business Impact vs Activity
- Session 3: Product Demo: Elate's Insights Feature
Speaking of Lou, we had the chance to chat with him during Blueprint's in-person event back in August. For those interested in learning more about how we come alongside organizations to elevate their strategic planning, check out the short video below. ⤵️
And a special THANK YOU to Lou for not only joining us yesterday but being such a supporter of Elate.
🍪 New Strategy Snacks Series
Along the same lines as above - we've been clipping up some valuable snippets from these sessions. If you don't already, follow us on LinkedIn to get bite-sized strategic planning tips over the next few weeks in you feed, like this one below. Also, here is a link to the Youtube playlist.
That's all for today, have a great rest of your week.
-Brooks
PS: We have a really exciting announcement coming next week. Stay tuned.
