Step 1:  Create an organisational chart to establish the leadership team and responsibilities.

Outline the core functions in your business – typically between 5 and 9 processes. For each core function, assign a person who will be responsible for driving that part of the business. The people who oversee these processes are the leadership team. 

Typical functions include: Leadership & Oversight, Finance  Legal, Project Delivery & Business Systems, Technology & Infrastructure, Sales & Specification, Marketing & Brand, HR & Recruitment.

The leadership team are responsible for making key decisions for the company and set it’s direction. Organise weekly, monthly and quarterly meetings of the leadership team to track progress. Each leader then must have a meeting with the people of the company that they are responsible for.

Step 2: Set the vision and direction of the company.

Create a vision document that answers the following 8 questions:

What is your core product or service focused on? 

What are your core values? 

What is your purpose in business? 

What is your Big Hairy Audacious Goal (BHAG) looking like?

Who is your target market and how do you reach them? 

What are the 3 things you are going to be great at?

What is your proven process?

What is your guarantee to the customer?

Actively review, debate and engage on the vision document with your leadership team 4 times a year.

Share the vision document with the entire team.

Step 3: Create a numbers driven business – identify your key metrics (KPIs), track them and review them with your leadership team weekly.

• Create a spreadsheet and/or dashboard that contains your most important numbers.
  • For example: Current workload, Leads, Sales, Utilization, Revenue, Profit, Training Time, Customer Satisfaction, Staff Satisfaction

Step 4: Set run meetings with a purpose and find the right rhythm for them.

10-minute daily stand-up meeting with the management team to discuss the issues of the day.

90-minute weekly leadership meeting rhythm:

15-20 minutes: look at your key numbers, check to-do lists, major 90-day goals and accountability, customer and employee deadlines. 

65 minutes to discuss issues (both opportunities and problems) - set a collaborative Google Doc and list these issues. Process for dealing with issues: IDS - Identify, Discuss, Solve.

Last 5 minutes: review to-do’s and confirm ownership, any cascading messages to tell in the company weekly meeting, evaluate the meeting on a scale of 1 to 10.

1-day quarterly retreat - apart from reviewing the quarterly numbers, the two core activities are:

First, everybody must ask themselves “What are the 1-3 things that  I should focus on, that will push my department most towards our combined strategic goal?” Set these as your quarterly goals.

The second activity is to deal with high-level issues - discuss what the issues are and what the solutions might be. The solutions can become quarterly goals for the leader.

See example notes here.

2-day off-site annual meeting

Review company vision and strategy.

Make a SWOT analysis (planning method that evaluates strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats to a business).

Review and refine company’s long-term (3-year) goals.

See example notes here.

Suggestion: Have an Agenda - Google document template for each of the meetings - weekly, quarterly and annually.