Annual Business Planning Starts Before The Meeting
2024 is around the corner.
What will it look like for your business?
If you’re thinking, “That’s what my annual planning meeting is for,” you’re missing a big opportunity.
First and foremost: Annual planning is table stakes.
Say it with me: Annual planning is table stakes.
If you don’t have an annual planning meeting scheduled yet, put it in the books. Today.
If you don’t know how to facilitate annual planning or need some help, please connect with our consulting team.
I can’t stress enough how important this is. If you aren’t doing it, you’re already behind most of your competitors. You aren’t setting yourself up for success.
And you’ll likely spend most of 2024 playing catch-up when you realize you don’t have a concrete plan to hit your goals.
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Now that the lecture portion of this email is over…how can you take your annual planning to the next level?
The work starts long before the meeting itself.
If you show up to annual planning with a blank slate, you’ll spend too much time generating ideas.
In reality, the brainstorming, the strategic thinking—all of that should happen prior to getting together with your leadership team to set your objectives for the year.
What are the 2-3 strategic initiatives you think the company needs to work on for 2024? How will those initiatives help you get where you want to be 3 years from now?
Take this kind of focused, futuristic thinking approach. The meeting itself is for bringing your team’s ideas to the table, getting consensus, and then clearly defining who is going to work on what.
Strategy takes time. It takes thought. It takes effort.
And you need more than one or two days (even one or two very long session days) to come up with the strategy for your entire organization.
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You should also be working on your budget for 2024 right now.
Here’s where it becomes obvious that you need to do some planning in advance: if you have no idea what you’ll be doing next year, how can you build a budget that projects what you’ll earn and what you’ll spend?
If you need help with your budget, we can support you there, too.
I know. It’s a lot to think about. The planning that comes before the planning. The budgeting that happens alongside the planning.
It takes time and energy.
But if you want to grow next year, you can’t rely on hope. And the economy isn’t going to give you a natural boost—not in 2024.
- Get an annual planning meeting on the books
- Before the meeting, identify the 2-3 strategic initiatives that will move the needle next year
- Hash out your budget accordingly, including any new hires or other investments you’ll need to make those initiatives happen
If you feel overwhelmed, take a breath. You won’t get it perfectly right the first time—or ever, really.
You also don’t have to do it alone.
If you need help with any part of the annual planning process, get in touch.
