Annual planning facilitator for 2027 priorities, goals and owners, agreed in one room
One or more facilitated planning days, with or without OKRs. You leave with no more than five company priorities, a measurable goal and a single owner for each, and the review dates already in the diary.
Matt RobertsCo-founder of ZOKRI
Peter KerrExpert adviser and facilitator
Meet Matt before you book
The person you'd be talking to, and how we think.
You're probably here because
Sound familiar?
- We have too many priorities, which means we have none.
- Our annual plan is the budget with some words added.
- Our plan is just last year's numbers with a few percentage points added.
- There's no new thinking, no spark.
- We keep talking about the same things, with no solutions and no follow-through.
- Last year's goals were forgotten by the end of the first quarter.
- I need the plan signed off before the January board meeting.
- Everyone wants a priority with their name on it.
What you leave with
What do you want to leave with?
Every team wants something slightly different, and we agree it with you first. These are the things leadership teams most often ask for.
- A one-page plan for 2027Three to five company priorities, each with a measurable goal, one owner and the first 90 days of work.
- A stop-doing listNew priorities need room. We agree what gets dropped, by name.
- Owners and resourcesEach priority gets the people and the budget it needs, or it comes off the list.
- Review dates, bookedThe 30-day check-in and the first quarterly review go in the diary before anyone leaves.
- OKRs, if you use themObjectives and key results drafted in the room and checked against "how would we know that happened?"
What AI does, and what only your team can do
If every competitor plans with the same AI, they all get the same plan.
The point
What everyone has, and what only your people know
Your competitors are asking AI the same questions you are, so they'll get the same answers. We use what everyone has, then spend the room on what only your people know: the customer insight nobody wrote down, and the idea someone is slightly embarrassed to say out loud.
- What AI gives everyoneTable stakes
- What only your people knowYour edge
Who runs it
The people in your room.
"Your planning day is the most expensive meeting you'll hold all year. The expensive bit isn't the venue. It's everyone working hard, for twelve months, on the plan you agreed. If it's the wrong plan, or simply a weaker one, you've bet the year on it. That's why most of our effort goes in before anyone sits down."
Proof
Run by people who do this every week.
"This is the most fun planning I have ever had. Every SLT needs to do this."
When we're the wrong choice. If all you need is next year's budget, your finance director is a better bet than us.
After the plan
The plan is agreed. Now someone has to find the time.
10 of 15recent discovery interviews
Leadership teams know what needs fixing.
- They can name the broken process and the meeting that goes nowhere.
- What they can't find is the time to fix it.
- Some aren't sure they have the skills.
- In 10 of our last 15 interviews, someone said it almost word for word.
- Output under pressure
- Work harder
- No time to improve
- Capability erodes
- More fires
MIT's John Sterman and Nelson Repenning call it the capability trap.
- Under pressure, the sensible short-term move is to work harder.
- That leaves no time to improve the way work gets done.
- Capability erodes, the fires multiply, and firefighting starts to feel like diligence.
Source: Repenning and Sterman, California Management Review, 2001
It's hard to see from the inside.
- Managers see their own patch, but most plans fail at the handoffs between teams.
- In a study of nearly 8,000 managers, 84% could rely on their boss and their own team. Only 9% could always rely on colleagues in other functions.
- Naming the problem is political, because it usually points at a peer or a past decision.
- Most managers were promoted for doing the work, not for designing how it flows.
Source: Sull, Homkes and Sull, Harvard Business Review, 2015
- With youCoachingReviews
So we stay, then step back.
- At first we run the work alongside your people: mapping the process, testing a fix, measuring it and running the retrospective.
- Then your managers run the next cycle while we coach from the side.
- Then we step back to the quarterly review.
- Your people learn by doing the work with us, which sticks in a way a training day never does.
- We'd rather you stopped needing us by spring.
- People
- Operations
- Sales and marketing
- AI enablement
Fractional, until the role is hired or grown
Sometimes the gap is a missing person, not a missing skill.
- The plan needs someone to lead the people side, run operations, drive sales and marketing, or get AI working in the business.
- Hiring for that takes six months you don't have.
- One of us joins your team part-time, works from inside with your people and systems, and hands the role over when you've hired or grown someone into it.
Weekly check-in
Goal 2Your owner + oursProgressConfidence3 of 5We're your accountability partners.
- People find it harder to let a goal slide when someone outside the business turns up every week expecting to see it moved.
- A quarterly cadence, with a named owner on your side and one on ours for every goal.
- Weekly check-ins on progress and confidence, so a slipping goal shows up in week three rather than week twelve.
- What we learn, including what didn't work, is written down and shared across the team.
- We're measured on one thing, and it's results.
- Planning30 daysCarry on
Every engagement ends with a 30-day review and an option to carry on.
- However we run your planning, from a single in-person day to several weeks of interviews, async work, online sessions and workshops.
- The option is priced before we start, so nobody has to negotiate when energy is low.
- Most teams know by day 30 whether they want it.
Questions people ask first
Are you a business planning consultant?
Yes. We bring the planning process, the templates and the challenge a business planning consultant would, then facilitate your leadership team to agree the plan, so it's theirs and they carry it out.
What does an annual planning facilitator do?
An annual planning facilitator designs and chairs the session where your leadership team agrees next year's priorities, goals and owners. They run the preparation, keep the day neutral, and make sure every priority leaves the room with one owner and a review date.
We already do annual planning. What's different?
Most companies do annual budgeting and call it planning. A budget says what you'll spend. A plan says the five things you'll achieve, who owns each one and what you'll stop doing to make room.
Do we have to use OKRs?
No. The method works with OKRs, V2MOM, Rocks or a plain list of goals. If you want to learn OKRs, your team learns them by writing its own in the room.
Isn't November too late to start?
No. Most annual plans are finished between December and February. Planning in January still gives you a plan before the first board meeting of the year.
Why not run it ourselves?
Someone inside can chair the day or take part in it, not both. And the CEO can't be neutral about their own priorities, which is usually where the argument is.
What does it cost?
A fixed fee, agreed after a 30-minute call once we know the size of the group, how long you have and what has to be decided by the end.
Is it confidential?
Yes. Pre-work and one-to-ones are confidential, themes are shared without names, and we sign an NDA before seeing any data.
Related
Last updated
Get your 2027 plan agreed before January fills up.
Thirty minutes with Matt. Tell us what has to be decided, and afterwards we'll send you a short summary of the call: what we heard, and how we'd approach it.