It's that time of year where companies are taking an in-depth look into their strategic plans, re-adjusting to changing environments and reflecting on business needs. With everything going on at the moment (remote working, small businesses having to close, the list goes on), leadership teams will not only need to re-asses strategy but become more strategically agile and be able to re-adjust quickly.
At Everperform we are no different. Looking at our FY20/21 strategy and beyond, we have had to respond and adapt to changes in the market and industries we work with. One thing we found seriously useful when preparing for our strategy sessions is collecting feedback from the leadership team beforehand. Not only did this allow us to come prepared, but we got to hear and digest thoughts and ideas before our sessions, spending most of the time discussing and breaking them down rather than coming up with them.
We've found this so useful, we wanted to share some of the questions we asked our leadership team with you. The responses to these questions were a mix of ratings and comments, giving us more context to how people were really feeling.
If you want to see these questions live in Everperform, get in touch with us.
FY20 reflection pulse:
We used this pulse to get some insights into how the leadership team felt we performed as a company, and how they performed personally for the year. It went out before our first session, and was a short, sharp pulse that didn't take long to complete, but triggered deep thought needed to plan our strategy.
Some of the questions we collected feedback on were:
How would you rate the company's performance overall this year?
How would you rate the management team's performance this year?
How would you rate your personal performance this year?
What excited you the most this year?
What caused you the most stress this year?
If you were king/queen for a day, what would you do to make [Everperform] better?
FY21 planning pulse
This pulse was sent out a week after our reflection pulse (we prefer short, sharper strategy sessions over a few weeks to get the best ideas) to get a sense of people's strengths, blockers and what they would like to achieve in the coming year.
Some of the questions we asked our leadership team were:
I am using the following strengths frequently in my work...
I would like to use the following strengths more in the next 12 months...
The most important goal for me to focus on in the next 12 months is...
What are you doing at the moment that would hinder you achieving this goal?
Which team members could help you the most in achieving your goal?
The responses to these questions were made available for the leadership team to look at in real-time (using Everperform), so we could get a sense of how people were feeling and thinking before we started any sessions.
If you're in the middle of your strategy planning, about to start or are even done, feel free to ask your leadership team these questions before any strategy sessions to help you come better prepared. We found these so useful that were are planning to ask them every month to quarter and see how we are thinking while executing, which people need help, how aligned we are and to help us adapt quickly.
Of course, you can automate these questions (or your own version) and correlate the answers in Everperform, making strategic planning even easier. Get in touch with us to find out how.
