This is the third part of a four part series on communications in a high growth company. “Part 1: Internal Meetings – Don’t hate them, hate the way they are practiced” covered meetings, why we hate ‘em but need ‘em and “Part 2: Rockefeller Habits – Communications and Meetings” provided a short background on Verne Harnish‘s 202 book, Mastering the Rockefeller Habits and why I continue to introduce folks to it.
We ended Part 2 with a high level look at the Quarterly Theme and we’ll go into more detail on that here, before addressing the Regular Meeting Rhythm in Part 4
The Quarterly Theme is the critical communication vehicle as described by Verne Harnish for his blog, The Growth Guy.
It starts with a simple question “what is the biggest opportunity or challenge facing the firm and how are we going to address it?”
The Quarterly Plan contains several items, and I find these four to be the most important:
Quarterly Theme
A Critical Focused Measurable Target
Specific Targets (Day Job)such as Revenue, New Customers, Cash, Gross Margin, Revenue/Employee, etc.
Priorities or Rocks for Jim Collins fans. (Build the Business)
These are put together by a variety of groups in various companies. It’s key to make sure the various stakeholders are included in the process otherwise it can easily become or be seen as a top down, sales centric or product driven approach when the best plans are a balance of pushing the organization forward while understanding some of the key limitations and not setting unrealistic expectations. Some companies include the Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) process created at Intel and extensively used at other companies such as Google as a means to establishing these objective and targets throughout the organization.
And then add to these an exciting Celebration/Reward for Hitting the Target and a Creative Scoreboard that shows in real time or at least daily where the company is compared to target and you have the beginnings of a great kickoff to the quarter. But establishing the targets and rewards is a small part of executing against them. Here the Rockefeller Habits suggests doing things a bit different than you typical quarterly goal announcement. At the quarterly all hands meeting you celebrate last quarters achievements, highlight the performance of individuals and groups and give an update on the overall activities and direction of the firm. Them with much fanfare you roll out the new theme and specific objectives and targets. This is critical, because each person will then need to work with their group to define the objectives and targets they have that support the company’s overall goals. And of course, the camaraderie and team building that is inherent in working together toward a meaningful achievement that can be shared by all builds a sense of purpose and commitment’s that few people feel when working alone.
Now that you have established and communicated the goal, the departments and groups in the company develop their collective and individual priorities and targets with clearly defined owners. Once that is done, it is time to execute and the Rockefeller Habits describes a variety of meetings to keep the objectives in front of everyone, break through logjams early and often, and maintain a consistent direction throughout the organization. We’ll cover this in Part 4 – Regular Meeting Rhythm.