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How to Set Your Company’s Stage for the New Year

By: Andrea Panno

The holiday bustle is over and the ‘see you next year’ comments are out of our system. The onset of a new year is here – as is the opportunity to celebrate your successes and energize your team around new goals. Most companies, including those that run on the Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS®), will hold a State of the Company meeting before the close of January to recap the previous year and discuss what’s yet to come. If you’re a business leader who wants to take this time to truly revitalize your team, you shouldn’t take the meeting lightly. It’s an opportunity to squash troubling statistics like these in your company:1

  • 39% of employees are unaware of their company’s goals and objectives
  • 47% don’t know the state of their company’s performance
  • 44% don’t understand how their role helps the company meet its goals

Set the stage for your company in the New Year by giving your team the constructive closure and inspirational send-off they need. Hold a company-wide meeting that covers three things about your company:

 

1. Where we’ve been

2. Where we’re going

3. How we’re going to get there

It’s important to recognize that the level of transparency your C-suite maintains within the organization will dictate your agenda for this meeting. Speaking from my experience as a team member in a proud EOS company that values transparency, the more forthcoming you can be with key information about the business, the more engaged your team will feel in helping achieve company goals. Use this time-tested and proven outline to effectively communicate your company’s current standing to the rest of your staff:

Where We’ve Been

Your team has worked hard all year to achieve your company’s financial and operational goals. At minimum, they should know if these goals were met. Review your company’s financial status, being careful to provide context around the content you’re showing. There’s nothing more harmful to a business than showing employees important financial statistics without explaining what they mean or how they should be interpreted. Next, run through an itemized list of your company’s operational goals. These are things like hiring new employees, opening a new office, adding a service line or launching a new website. Speak to each accomplishment and acknowledge personnel contributions directly, if applicable.

Where We’re Going

Next, paint a picture of where your company is going in the near future. Take them through the financial and operational goals for the year, ensuring they are S.M.A.R.T. (strategic, measurable, attainable, realistic and trackable) goals that your team can easily visualize. Then, discuss the same quantitative and qualitative characteristics of your three-year and ten-year plans. Relaying this information to your greater team will help them see your vision and understand why certain strategic decisions are being made that might otherwise seem arbitrary.

How We’re Going to Get There

Now that you’ve clued in the greater team on your company’s inside track, it’s important to instill in them the confidence that there exists a clear plan for achieving all the goals you’ve established. Of course, your growth plans can change from year-to-year, so diving too deep won’t work at this level; instead, stick with a fundamental strategy for how you plan to ‘get there.’ The fundamentals should become constants in your business because they act as pillars for how you conduct business. EOS-run companies group their fundamentals into these three elements:

1. Core Values

Your Core Values are critical to your company’s success; they should be used for hiring, firing, reviewing and rewarding employees. They will be instrumental in your company’s ability to sustain as an organization and build a high-performing team. Review these aloud – read the values to your team slowly, providing context and even examples if needed for each.

2. Core FocusTM

Your Core Focus should reflect your company’s mission statement; it should align with why your company exists and what EXACTLY it offers customers. This must be crystal clear to everyone in your organization. Craft your Core Focus with help from Sagefrog CEO and Co-founder Mark Schmukler. Take a look at Sagefrog’s Core Focus to guide your efforts: To unlock potential and accelerate client success through B2B brand building and integrated marketing.

3. Marketing Strategy

Your Marketing Strategy is the WAY you’re going to achieve your plans. Naturally as marketers, this is our favorite piece of the puzzle. This includes elements like your target market (both demographic and psychographic characteristics), your top differentiators or uniques that you position against competitors in the marketplace and a proven process for how you work with your clients.

As the conclusion of your State of the Company meeting, be sure to leave plenty of time for Q&A – especially if it’s your first one. As an executive or business leader, the fundamentals of your business plan are second nature, but to individuals within your company who don’t regularly see ‘the numbers’ or exercise strategic business thinking, this level of information can be overwhelming or difficult to digest.

The best advice we can give you is to take it slow. Explain why you believe in sharing this information with everyone. Beyond building trust, a transparent company culture with a predictable cadence for information sharing will set the stage for your company and align your team each year so you’re all rowing in the same direction. Remember: the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

Do you need help getting the most out of your EOS investment? Contact Sagefrog Marketing Group today to accelerate your B2B marketing success.

Source: Simple Habits to Increase Employee Accountability, EOS Worldwide


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