I'm a huge fan of violently destroying annual planning. What did you do in September? Sprinted to the end of quarter to hit the pipeline goal for the quarter. And what did you do in October? Looked back on the previous quarter and where you are YTD.
And THAT is why I HATE annual planning. Annual planning takes a hug amount of time and executive resources for the next "year" when in reality your focus is the next quarter.
I use a 6Q planning - 6 quarters out. At the end of every quarter, look back on hits and misses, goal met, goals missed and what I learned along the way. And then I look at next quarter:
Are the goals still the same?
Are the activities still the same?
What technology do we need?
What information do we need?
What people do we need?
What financing do we need?
Is there something in Q2, Q3, Q4, Q5, Q6 that we want to move up?
Is there something next quarter we want to move back?
Is there something urgent and important to add in Q1?
A 6Q plan is an agile methodology to take your quarterly reviews into planning with an eye on a distant future and a near future and the learnings from the recent past.
6Q planning takes a large effort to set up. But once in place, quarterly planning with a 6Q lens is done in 1-2 days.
No more week long or 2 week long sifting through financials, CRM, technology. Current state, near state, future state and go. I picked this up at Alliance Data and have never looked back.
Oooooo I really like this and I'm 99.99% sure you told me about this last year as well so this is a great reminder to listen to the advice this year! And for the exact reason you mentioned - at a scaling company, too much changes in a month or a quarter to be rigidly locked into something, so having the ability to flex to those changes in near-real time is such a better approach.
It's almost like you've experienced all of this stuff before + are trying to help me learn those lessons from you ;)
The vast majority of annual planning is what? Tactics. We throw around "strategy" but annual planning is the tactical implementation of a 3-5 year plan. Very few tactics span multiple years, and the agile methodology enables you to align and address the current market with learnings from the past and an eye on the future.
Build it out with Sales, Marketing, Operations, Product, Finance and then roll everything up to Financial Goals and KPIs that track progress. It makes planning an on-going exercise instead of a point in time, reduces the amount of time for planning, and maintains alignment across the business. it's also easier to socialize the overall goals for a quarter among people. Better way to go IMHO
I'm a huge fan of violently destroying annual planning. What did you do in September? Sprinted to the end of quarter to hit the pipeline goal for the quarter. And what did you do in October? Looked back on the previous quarter and where you are YTD.
And THAT is why I HATE annual planning. Annual planning takes a hug amount of time and executive resources for the next "year" when in reality your focus is the next quarter.
I use a 6Q planning - 6 quarters out. At the end of every quarter, look back on hits and misses, goal met, goals missed and what I learned along the way. And then I look at next quarter:
Are the goals still the same?
Are the activities still the same?
What technology do we need?
What information do we need?
What people do we need?
What financing do we need?
Is there something in Q2, Q3, Q4, Q5, Q6 that we want to move up?
Is there something next quarter we want to move back?
Is there something urgent and important to add in Q1?
A 6Q plan is an agile methodology to take your quarterly reviews into planning with an eye on a distant future and a near future and the learnings from the recent past.
6Q planning takes a large effort to set up. But once in place, quarterly planning with a 6Q lens is done in 1-2 days.
No more week long or 2 week long sifting through financials, CRM, technology. Current state, near state, future state and go. I picked this up at Alliance Data and have never looked back.
Oooooo I really like this and I'm 99.99% sure you told me about this last year as well so this is a great reminder to listen to the advice this year! And for the exact reason you mentioned - at a scaling company, too much changes in a month or a quarter to be rigidly locked into something, so having the ability to flex to those changes in near-real time is such a better approach.
It's almost like you've experienced all of this stuff before + are trying to help me learn those lessons from you ;)
The vast majority of annual planning is what? Tactics. We throw around "strategy" but annual planning is the tactical implementation of a 3-5 year plan. Very few tactics span multiple years, and the agile methodology enables you to align and address the current market with learnings from the past and an eye on the future.
Build it out with Sales, Marketing, Operations, Product, Finance and then roll everything up to Financial Goals and KPIs that track progress. It makes planning an on-going exercise instead of a point in time, reduces the amount of time for planning, and maintains alignment across the business. it's also easier to socialize the overall goals for a quarter among people. Better way to go IMHO