Four Best Practice Agenda Items for Strategy Review Meetings

Strategy Review Meeting Frequency

I have to admit that putting together a good strategy meeting agenda can be an exercise in leadership team geopolitical maneuvers.  What are we going to discuss?  Who needs to talk?  Who doesn’t need to talk?  But when you’ve finally cracked the code, your meetings can turn from (a hopefully more diverse version of) 12 Angry Men to some version of intelligent people making better-informed decisions.Yes, you heard that right. You too can have a management team making better decisions! 

Here are four key agenda items that work in any Strategy Review.

1. Start with the Strategy Map – Before you discuss metrics, targets, actuals, variances, financials, stretch targets, percentages, project plans, line items, action items, and any and all things quantitative, take a quick look at this simply color-coded one-ager. I promise over the course of the meeting you’ll dive into details.  First, take a collective deep breath and remind yourself of the logic behind the map.  Where are your gaps?  What are you doing well?  Is your business strategy working?
2. Trend Reports – Target where you’re falling off a cliff. If you are moving from green to yellow, that is an indicator that may be something to discuss.
   
3. No more than 3-5 Deep-Dive Objectives – Whether you have 8 strategic objectives or 20, if you try to talk about everything, you end up talking about nothing. Narrow your focus down to the critical big-picture items that need course-corrections.

4. Close with something you’re doing well – Select an objective or initiative that has seen improvement in the past couple of months to close your deep dives with. Even well-structured meetings can get bogged down, so end on a lighter note to keep things moving (hopefully towards lunch.)

At the end of the day, remember your key deliverables will be a list of action items that your team can review.  Make sure you take thorough notes with action item owners, deadlines, and clearly marked deliverables.