In two to four weeks
You can install all six in weeks. Not embed them. Install them.
The focus
Produce The Focus. Two or three choices, the hardest thing under each, and what you will not compromise. On one page, in the room, finished before anybody leaves.
Then the first cut of The Numbers. For each choice, what should move if the belief underneath is right, and which of those you can move yourself.
Share it with your teams along with an invite to ask questions in person on a date in the diary.
Take a look at the template and the example to remind you what this looks like.
The ideas
Teams get together in small groups and add ideas to a list in the suggested structure.
The idea ...
The potential value of the idea …
The fit with our strategic choices …
The tests to increase confidence …
The effort required …
The very shortlist
Ideas are discussed, grouped into themes and voted on, with a consensus being reached. These are discussed with the SLT, and feedback is given.
Some iteration might happen here.
The goals
Take aim. The objective, outcomes, the measures, the issues you expect to come up against, and starting confidence. Named people, time percentages, dates, one accountable owner, and what is coming off to make room.
Expect one goal not to survive this. That is the process working, not failing.
These goals are often cross-functional, with some teams dedicated to them. When this happens, make sure the team lead gets support to lead, and the team comes together to become a team ASAP.
The first meet
The first weekly meeting. Four questions, sixty minutes.
One. For each goal, what is your confidence now, and what would increase it?
Two. So what are we deciding to do, learn via experiments, and repeat because it works?
Three. Issues list: what’s on it, and do we need help?
Four. Should this goal continue?
And the same next week.
And in the same fortnight, cancel the meeting this replaces. Not next quarter. If both still exist in ninety days, you have added an hour to everybody's week and the new one will not survive the first difficult month. This is the part people quietly skip, and skipping it is the best single predictor that none of it holds.
The team health metrics
The five to ten measures that tell you that a team is in good health on a dashboard, along with measures that come from your strategic choices.
Each individual's goals
To support the company's goals and ensure their team operates excellently, what do they need to learn, how do they need to develop, and what numbers can and should they carry? What behaviours should they personify?
Each person is being supported to learn, develop, achieve and adapt to their changing workplace and our changing world.
Launch the bonus plan
Open the Bonus Calculator. Put the company gate in first: the one or two things that must be true for anything to pay at all, weighted to the crux. If the hardest thing does not carry the heaviest weight, the plan is telling people something you do not mean.
Then the health gate. A bonus that pays while quality, safety or retention slips is a bonus that bought you a bad quarter. Set the floor and say out loud that it is a floor, not a target.
Individual weights come last, and only for things a person can actually move on their own. Everything else belongs to the team.
Team goals, single or cross-functional, are never bonused.
Those goals are how you execute the strategy and pursue operational excellence. They need new thinking, experiments and some risk. Attach money to them and you will get safe targets, quietly set, and you will never hear the truth in a check-in again.
Then show everybody the sheet. The whole calculation, the weights and the reasoning next to each. A bonus plan people cannot recalculate themselves is a bonus plan they do not believe. Ten minutes in the room now saves an argument in ninety days.
Take a look at the template and the worked example before you fill it in. Most of the work is deciding the weights, and the sheet does the rest.
And one thing in the diary for next month
An hour with the same people, the measures in front of you, and one question written on the agenda: is any of this telling us the plan is wrong?
That hour is what picks up the away day's best part, and it is the difference between a strategy that adapts and one that gets reviewed in January.