Top 10 Business Planning Tips for 2022

It has been a great year and I’ve been thinking about the patterns I have seen when helping teams plan and systemise performance improvements. These are my top 10 growth initiatives if you’re planning for growth in 2022. Which ones resonate most with you and what would you like to see added to this list?

#1 – Share Strategy

Provide clarity on your strategy by naming the battlegrounds you must win and prioritise goals around strategy delivery.

#2 – Breakdown Silos

Stop setting goals in departmental silos and make goals transparent, more aligned and frequently cross-functional.

#3 – Outcomes & Cadence

Give your execution teams outcome based goals and establish a discussion cadence that reports progress, aligns priorities and removes problems.

#4 – Make Priorities Visible

Don’t just make goals visible, make the work that’s achieving them visible so that priorities can be seen.

#5 – Get Better At Metrics

Get better at agreeing and tracking the few KPIs that matter and make them part of your weekly discussions.

#6 – Fewer Better Meetings

Value time more and reduce unnecessary meetings and replace them with fewer better meetings with clear agendas, action assignment and follow-up.

#7 – Empower Teams

Once you’ve got goal clarity and priorities are agreed, empower teams to work more autonomously.

#8 – Master Retrospectives

Embed retrospectives in your planning and execution cycles. They are key to teams systematically improving quarter-on-quarter.

#9 – Encourage Ambition

Set harder goals and make not achieving goals at 100% safe. You will unlock improvements in focus, effort, innovation, collaboration and learning.

#10 – Value What’s Working

Not everything can or should be the target of improvement and not everyone is working on exciting change projects. That does not mean business-as-usual work should not be recognised and celebrated.