How are You and Your Organization Doing? A Check-Up from the Neck Up
It’s conventional wisdom to test everything to ensure optimal performance. From all kinds of mechanisms to IT systems, customer and employee satisfaction and the overall health of an organization.
Even people in high-risk occupations, like pilots, get an annual check-up to make sure they are fit for the job.
Here’s what we recommend, at the very least, for an annual self and organizational health check-up:
For CEOs and Executives
- Using the Mental Health Continuum (below), reflect on the last year through the windows of Work, Self/Resilience and Life. (Chapter 7, Your Oxygen Mask First).
- Evaluate the percentage of time spent in the growth quadrant (below) to drive or lay the foundation for the organization’s growth beyond this financial year.
- from our upcoming book The Four Forces of Growth.
For the Organization
- Review all key leaders (usually the top 25 to 35 most impactful roles) and their make sure their development plans are in place to either sustain their performance at an A level, or improve their performance to get there.
- Review other team members to ensure they have a plan to become A Players (in your organization or somebody else’s).
For your Strategy
- Make sure your strategy is incredibly simple and can be shared and understood in less than 90 seconds.
- Ensure the strategy is relentlessly executed. Meaning the company, each department and executive or key function has clear, SMART goals, on a quarterly basis – and that they would all get at least an A on their report card for effective execution of their piece of the strategy.
For the Numbers
- Ensure you have very simple reporting to show:
- Weekly or monthly trends on the key metrics that reflect your strategy, rocks and company flywheel
- The performance of each key function, key executive or department.
In a perfect world, you will do this review before your annual planning session. But at a minimum, do this review at least once a year so that you can recalibrate what you’re thinking and feeling about your business with real data.
The Challenge
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- On a scale from 0 to 10, how effective is your annual health check?
- What are the next one or two things you could incorporate into annual checkup to help you to be a more effective leader?
An organizational check-up is easy with our Growth Playbook, a tool designed to assess the overall habits and growth metrics of an organization and all the key levers that drive a company’s enduring growth. Let us know if you’d like to learn more.