Are Your Strategy Sessions Really All That Strategic?

In Strategy Resources by Brandt A. HandleyLeave a Comment

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Strategy sessions can yield fantastic results for your Middle Market company. However, like many meetings, if they aren’t conducted well the results can be disappointing. If you are focusing time, energy and resources on strategy sessions, you can ensure success with some simple tips.

Know Your Objectives Before You Meet

The main goal of most regular strategy sessions is to spark innovation, resolve issues or come up with a vision for projects or your overall company performance. No matter what you use the sessions for in your Middle Market organization, you can’t measure success or know when you’ve hit your goals if you don’t know what you want to achieve in the first place.

Spend time developing a solid plan for what you want to discuss, how each meeting will be run, what your key goals will be, how you’ll gauge success, and when you’ll know to move on to the next subject.

You might even want to outline the method for picking an objective and how to determine who will be involved.

Make Meetings More Effective

We’ve all attended meetings that left us disappointed or feeling it was a waste of time. To make sure your strategy sessions are successful and effective consider implementing some of the following tips.

  • Have specific and measurable outcomes for every meeting
  • Consider breaking your overall goals into mini-sessions with a laser-focused topic
  • Decide on a meeting schedule to keep things on track
  • Set a reasonable time limit and outline rules for sharing and discussions
  • Send out an outline or schedule in the meeting request with specific goals and requests
  • Consider giving homework for each session and set expectations
  • Make sure you have all the necessary decision-makers or team members involved
  • Start each meeting with a recap of the past meeting and discussion of the objective
  • Allow a set amount of time for discussion or banter before moving onto decision-making
  • Decide how you’ll come to an agreement and who has final say

    • Evaluate & Update Regularly

    When you have a good process and flow for your strategy sessions, you will likely see some great results – at least initially. After a while your Middle Market participants may get stuck on certain areas or events in your organization may start to derail your success.

    It’s important to continually evaluate the effectiveness of your programs and how much progress your strategy group is making. Having ways to quantify the ROI of these sessions is important. Also, regularly take the temperature of your participants. Do they feel the meetings are staying on track and are productive? Do they have suggestions or is it potentially time to swap out some members?

    Many companies will assign a theme, subject or goal for every quarter, which might make sense for your group. A monthly or year-long focus might be a better option for your Middle Market organization. Either way, make sure you have a schedule and goal in mind and schedule regular times to check-in with your participants and evaluate the process.

    Strategy sessions could be the answer to some of your company’s toughest problems but need to be planned and run successfully to get the results you desire.

    So what’s in the Mighty Middle Market for me? — get it right now at www.Go4ROI.com.

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