Is your executive team executing efficiently?

How can you and your executive team move from alignment around a plan to executing without drama?

In my recent articles,”Is Your Executive Team Aligned?”, “The Alignment Playbook: Scaling Up”, ”How one CEO doubled business with aligned execs”, and “Your One Page Strategic Plan for Aligned Growth” I discussed how to get an executive team on the same page and going in the same direction, so they can help the CEO lead the company to grow profitably, predictably and sustainably.

While the first three columns of an executive team’s One Page Strategic Plan captures their desired culture, their strategy and longer term goals, the annual plan column is what they will tangibly execute to make it happen.

Being aligned around an annual plan is one thing. Executing on it with discipline and accountability is another.

Don’t get me wrong. An aligned executive team that is committed to their annual plan is a great starting point. And it’s a critical one for supporting accountability. Because accountability starts with commitment.

But the discipline to follow through on those accountabilities is where things often break down.

Thankfully, there’s a handful of proven business practices to resolve this challenge once and for all:

1. A Monthly Operating and Financial Forecast
2. Quarterly Targets and Priorities
3. An Executive Team Meeting Rhythm
4. A Results Tracking System

Let’s discuss them one by one.

1. A Monthly Operating and Financial Forecast

For an executive team to execute their annual plan, a monthly operating and financial forecast is a critical execution tool to regularly check if the company is on or off course.

Breaking down the expected monthly changes in volumes, revenues, costs and cash, and tracking your actual results against the forecast on a monthly basis enables you and your team to make decisions frequently to keep things on track.

Creating a Monthly Operating and Financial Forecast based on your annual targets also enables you and your team to validate that your initial one year targets are actually feasible financially, given the assumptions your plan is based on. A feasible plan is an executable plan.

A Monthly Operating and Financial Forecast should also reflect any major investments you and your team are planning to make. These should reflect the annual priorities for change, improvement and growth that you’ve planned based on the company’s Number One Addressable Challenge for the year.


2. Quarterly Targets & Priorities

The most effective and efficient way for small to mid size companies to execute on an annual plan is to break it down into quarterly plans.

Your quarterly company operating and financial targets are straightforward as they will come directly from your Monthly Operating and Financial Forecast.

As for your quarterly company priorities, an executive team can roughly sketch them out quarter by quarter during annual planning. However, this is always an approximation and not an exact plan to hold yourselves to.

Instead, at the end of your annual planning, work from that rough sequence of quarterly priorities and select which ones absolutely need to happen in the first quarter. Then after that first quarter, at the next quarterly planning meeting (usually a one to two day investment), determine what is most important to bite off for the next quarter based on what you learned and how things are evolving. And repeat every quarter.

What’s critical is to identify who is accountable for each of those quarterly priorities and what needs to be achieved that quarter for each. Then the leader for each quarterly priority identifies who else needs to be involved and how, and prepares an action plan to make it happen.


3. An Executive Team Meeting Rhythm

An effective execution process for an executive team includes quarterly planning meetings (as previously discussed), monthly check-ins, weekly meetings and daily huddles.

It's great to have a plan for the quarter. But then the day-to-day challenges of running a business happen. And things can go off track. A consistent meeting rhythm ensures the executive team connect regularly to communicate, problem-solve and keep the plan on track.

Five to ten minute daily huddles enable the executive team to stay synchronized, know who’s doing what and identify issues and blockers to quickly resolve them throughout the week before they snowball.

60 to 90 minute weekly meetings allow the executive team to proactively check whether quarterly results and priorities are on track and collaborate to resolve any larger issues or blockers.

Half day to full day monthly meetings provide the opportunity for the executive team to, again, check whether quarterly results and priorities are on track, and also to resolve larger issues or discuss opportunities, proactively learn and apply new business practices, and make adjustments to the quarterly plan if needed. This ensures the executive team stays aligned on what’s most critical for the quarter.

4. A Results Tracking System

For any of this to work, results and progress need to be captured, written down, and accessible by everyone on the executive team, and in a consistent format so that everyone quickly and easily knows what to enter and what it all means.

The best way to do this is with a proven results tracking system.

Such a system is where your quarterly plan will be captured. This includes your targets for each company metric, your quarterly company priorities, who’s accountable for each, who’s involved and the action plans.

A results tracking system also captures the actual results for each company metric as well as actual progress on each quarterly company priority.

Seasoned business growth executive team coaches use such systems with their clients. These provide a shared platform to efficiently capture and track results on quarterly plans, supporting the executive team to more easily stay on top of things during and between their daily huddles, weekly meetings, monthly check-ins and quarterly planning.

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We find that executive teams who are new to these kinds of execution practices start with company-level forecasts, quarterly plans and meeting rhythms. Then over time, executive team members develop the capability to forecast, plan and meet with each of their teams. At that point, we encourage them to share and report on their department plans as an executive team so they are all aware of what they’re aiming to achieve in each area and can keep those plans aligned. This is when an executive team, if it functions in a healthy way, can really strengthen execution throughout the company, driving results and progress.

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These aren't just my ideas. They're discussed in the top-selling book Metronomics, by my colleague Shannon Byrne Susko. I'll cover that in the next 5 Minute Growth Tip.

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If you are a prairie CEO who wants to grow a thriving company, team and life more quickly, more easily and with less stress and headache, please contact me here.