How would you describe your corporate team? Are they like a gymnastics team…a group of individuals pursuing personal goals? Or are they more like a basketball team…a cooperative unit working for a common goal?
As you know, it’s the cooperative and disciplined teams that accomplish their goals most often. Achieving accelerated profitable growth occurs when team members have a clear shared purpose, and an integrated business management system that ensures a culture of execution and performance exists.
Improved execution and operating performance is part people, part process, part candor, and part discipline. All of which are part of a highly effective integrated business management process we call the Quarterly Operational Planning Process.
How does this process improve operating performance?
The Quarterly Operational Planning Process focuses on enabling an organization to achieve and sustain superior operating performance over time. It is an on-going focusing program designed to enhance earnings and cash flow by improving performance visibility, team accountability, communications and effectiveness throughout all functional units within an organization. The goal is to provide business leaders and stakeholders with a planning process that translates company vision and strategic initiatives into an operating plan that is revisited and reloaded every 90 days.
Three simple words…
Plan, execute, evaluate…plan, execute, evaluate…plan, execute, evaluate. When your company and/or department repeats this process over and over and over, what happens is that your collective team becomes very focused on what drives performance. Your collective team also becomes very analytical, and develops a deeper understanding about how certain activities either supports or detracts from achieving accelerated profitable growth. Developing a better understanding about what drives performance inside your company implies the employee team is developing a better understanding about the cause and effect relationships between employee actions and financial results.
An effective quarterly operational planning process will help your company in the following ways:
- Improve cross-functional collaboration and communication.
- Improve employee engagement and enthusiasm.
- Improve visibility regarding accomplishments and performance shortfalls.
- Improve candor and realism when assessing performance, capabilities and results.
- Develop a renewed team commitment to bottom line profitability.
The power of the pack
This performance improvement process, when facilitated properly, will create positive change that you can measure in both operational and financial terms. Part of the magic in this process is the power of the pack. Cesar Millan, host of the television show, The Dog Whisperer, on the National Geographic channel, uses the phrase…the power of the pack. He takes a dog that is underperforming, and places that dog in his coral of maybe 30 other well performing dogs. He leverages the positive peer pressure that comes from the pack to help the underperforming pooch improve his or her performance.
A similar thing happens within the quarterly operational planning process. Both good and bad performance becomes highly visible to the entire team. There is also positive peer pressure to perform at appropriate standards. In time, and after receiving support from the team, typically an underperforming team member’s performance will improve. If their performance doesn’t improve, that also becomes highly visible, and it will become clear that corrective action must be taken.
One of my clients mentioned the following…
“Through the quarterly operational planning process we have been able to bring our goals and objectives into clear alignment. Our teams now have a better focus and a strong commitment to teamwork.”
If you’re interested in a highly effective team building experience while focusing on building an operating plan that supports the achievement of the financial goals of the company, consider implementing the Quarterly Operational Planning Process in your company or department. It will create positive change you can measure in both operational and financial terms.
