"However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results."
Winston Churchill
With the year ending, many organisations plan their strategy review sessions to evaluate performance relative to strategic business goals set at the start of the year and prepare for the coming year.
This strategy review is critical in ensuring the investments made into planning business strategy were worthwhile. Top management meets vital stakeholders to analyse business performance and give feedback. The meeting is also important to evaluate opportunities and achievements and seek out areas the organisation can take advantage of to improve and, importantly, take the next step of execution.
Strategy review meetings provide answers to critical questions such as:
- Did we execute the plan?
- What happened?
- Why do we think that happened?
- What alternatives are there?
- What could happen?
- What choices do we have to make?
Unfortunately, many organisations go into strategy review sessions to talk about business operations, the ‘latest office fires’ or other project status reviews, all of which contradict the point of a strategy review. Since a strategy review session requires the C-suite’s and top executives’ participation, it’s imperative to ensure the session is as precise as possible.
What Is a Strategy Review Meeting?
Strategy Review Sessions are decision-driven gatherings that prioritise broad strategic concerns above specific tactical ones. While weekly team meetings ensure everyone is on track, strategy review sessions are an avenue to decide the best ways to align operations with the overall business strategy and, where possible, analyse why your execution may have failed.
A strategy review session should focus on the organisational goals and the activities carried out to achieve them. In addition, these goals must align with the organisation’s mission and vision.
Why does a strategy review session matter?
How often have you set goals, gone back on them, or lost focus? As we mentioned earlier, strategy review sessions provide the opportunity to ensure that an organisation is on track with business goals and that every decision aligns with the overall strategy.
Strategy review meetings help to reinforce organisational alignment, bringing key stakeholders together to clarify goals. By doing so, everyone is reminded of their contributions to the bigger picture.
Having these review meetings also presents the opportunity for employees to re-engage with the business strategy. Depending on their position within the organisation, some employees might not regularly be involved in the strategic plan. A monthly or quarterly review helps bring them into focus and ensures a renewed sense of purpose.
Ultimately, it offers the chance to identify growth opportunities that might be profitable for the business. For instance, by analysing internal performances and current market conditions, a new objective may be created or resources may be redirected to ensure more success.
How to Run an Effective Strategy Review Meeting
Many people complain about how strategy review sessions are boring. However, a practical strategy review session ensures that stakeholders evaluate business performance relative to strategy and make necessary changes to set things right.
Consider the following to ensure your review session is run as effectively as possible:
Focus on the strategy
Your strategy should drive the agenda of your meeting; it should be the focus of your session and nothing else. Address the critical issues and identify those that are on track. Ensure operational issues do not divert attention from strategic imperatives.
Ask questions like, “where are we now compared to where we want to be?”, “why are we not where we want to be?” and “what should we do differently to get us to where we want to be?”
The presence of top management should not prompt delegates in a strategy review session to raise non-strategic issues.
Set out an agenda
Careful planning is required for an effective strategy review session. Set the objectives of the meeting and send the information out in advance, and ensure everyone has enough time to review them and prepare.
Too often, more time is spent on corrections when people come unprepared. Sending out the notice and agenda ensures there’s no room for excuses for ill preparations.
Document your resolutions
Keep a record of all discussions and decisions made in the review session. Doing this is different from taking minutes of the meeting—note who’s accountable for what and when the following action plan is to be completed.
Read through decisions made at the end of the meeting and reiterate them to those with responsibilities.
Follow up on decisions
When engaging in strategic planning sessions, it is essential to do more than decide what to do and tell people how to do it. The key is to keep track of decisions and create a culture of follow-up within the organisation, where action plans are closed up before the next meeting.
Although this change will take time to happen, however, by putting strategy at the centre of the session agenda, you’ll notice the difference in how strategy sessions go from boring to engaging.
5 Mistakes to Avoid in Strategy Review Sessions
Keep an eye on some of these frequent mistakes at strategy review meetings.
Long (sometimes unrelated) conversations
Strategy review sessions are not the time for long conversations. Sometimes, complex, abstract topics lead to conversations that result in people talking for too long. As such, the meeting may run over the stipulated time.
The facilitator is responsible for keeping the conversations relevant and strictly on strategy results. To do this, circle back on the main discussion when off-topic subjects arise. If they’re topics that fit into a part of your agenda, you can hold them for later, while relevant stakeholders should discuss other unrelated issues at future meetings.
Discussing operations at strategy reviews
Strategy review sessions can quickly go off track when discussions about operations occur. It is essential to know that strategy review sessions differ from operations review meetings. While strategy review meetings focus on an organisation’s holistic strategic performance, a standard operational meeting is about operating procedures, examining the organisation’s workflow, communication issues and other factors that affect the business.
Although operational meetings are equally important, dwelling on these issues ensures strategy review meetings miss the big picture.
Playing it safe
Frankly, strategy review sessions are not usually friendly. On the contrary, these meetings are where tough business strategy questions are asked, with tough answers demanded. This is why strategy review meetings fare better when participants are not afraid to be critical of themselves, their teams or other teams and the organisation. There should be no room for diplomatic, transactional or funny responses to critical issues.
Involving everyone
There’s continuous debate about who should be involved in strategy review meetings. While leaders and managers are critical to making key decisions at the boardroom level, limiting strategy review sessions to only those who can influence strategy and perform top-level analyses is necessary. Frontline employees and other team members may need to understand the business ecosystem fully to address pertinent strategy issues.
However, managers need to involve their departmental teams and ensure they’re a part of the process. Doing this will increase participation and ensure employees are kept aware of decisions and the next steps.
Ineffective communication across the organisation
Earlier, we pointed out the mistake many organisations make by involving too many people in strategy review meetings. However, the error of not carrying everyone along or poor communication on the decisions and subsequent lines of action from the review session is more significant.
Ineffective communication is a fundamental reason some organisations fail to gain grounds for strategy review decisions. It may also include significant time gaps between strategic sessions.
When conducting review sessions, there’s a need for cross-functional communication across all levels of the organisation. If communication is ineffective, there won’t be buy-in from all stakeholders, hindering any progress made and making it more challenging to achieve the next steps.
In Conclusion
Strategy review sessions are decision-driven and concentrate on strictly concerns strategic concerns. Therefore, discussions should focus on critical strategic issues and suggestions to help the organisation achieve its goals.
We often read stories of organisations that start well and decline suddenly after a few months or years. These declines often result from mistakes made during and after critical strategy review sessions. The key to gaining an advantage over the competition and achieving set goals is to avoid falling into the trap of these mistakes.
On a final note, as a leader, the overall success of strategy review meetings and subsequent implementation of decisions falls on you. Without the right leadership in place, strategy is destined to fail.
At Workforce Learning, we help business leaders improve strategy execution by creating systems and solutions to drive alignment between your employees and overall business strategy to ensure you build and sustain high performance. Workforce Learning also has a team of expert facilitators who are able to tease out the most important strategic decisions from review sessions.
If you’d like us to help you, kindly schedule a consultation.
Olasunkanmi Adenuga
Director, Workforce Learning