ANNUAL PLANNING - DEMYSTIFYING THE PROCESS

Benjamin Franklin was credited for saying, “If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail!” ​​

The annual plan is about aspirational thinking and measuring performance. It's a time to celebrate what you have done well, and to reflect on those experiences which fell a little short.  
​
​The purpose of the annual plan is to align your team and everyone in the organization around a handful of priorities that keeps the company on track for financial success. Your annual plan will provide inspired focus and provide key performance measures to benchmark progress.

A good planning process forces you to do three things:
1)  ​Review past years' performance. ​

• Include your cross-functional partners to improve perspective.

           -  We'll talk later about using a traditional SWOT analysis to capture key thoughts.
2)  Define success and those metrics that matter.
3)  Align key resources around a shared thinking.

Once an annual plan has been agreed to, it infers entire organizational buy-in and their full support. To learn more about the planning process, read below. 

Read More