quarterly planning

Quarterly Planning: Will You Finish 2022 Strong?

There's nothing like the power and focus of a deadline to get things done. And now that we are heading towards the last quarter of the year, it’s time now to get clear on what to do to meet your commitments and annual goals and to finish the year strong.

My team and I were just talking about how setting aside time to reflect, and set or reset your priorities, every 90 days, is a magical thing. Once committed, you can almost invent time and space to get things done.

Ideally, we are accountable to ourselves daily and weekly. Quarterly, accountability to other people is a pretty powerful force.

In our team retreat over the weekend, we went through the annual version of this, as a group. In one hour, we were able to do a full reflection on the past year, and draft and update our Master Plan for the next one, three and ten+ years.

The key is to take the time to contemplate and assess. Having a quarterly planning structure makes it easier to do - and to come up with simple and powerful insights. Interestingly for me and my team partners, while most things were going incredibly well, we agreed that – after a couple of years of mostly virtual contact –we would benefit from doing more face-to-face discussion, this quarter.

The Challenge

  • Spend 60 minutes on your own or with someone who is critical in your life to help you do an honest reflection, and update your goals for Q4.

Additional Podcasts

Additional blogs


Lawrence & Co’s work focuses on sustainable and enhanced growth for you and your business. Our diverse and experienced group of advisors can help your leaders and executive teams stay competitive through the use of various learning tools including workshops, webinars, executive retreats, or one-to-one coaching.

We help high-achieving leaders to have it all – a great business and a rewarding life. Contact us for simple and impactful advice. No BS. No fluff.


decision making

Up to Speed with Decision Making

"An expert is someone who has succeeded in making decisions and judgements simpler through knowing what to pay attention to and what to ignore." - Edward de Bono, physician/psychologist/author, Six Thinking Hats

There’s much written and said about the speed and quality of decision-making.

Companies, as they scale up, are often successful because they are quick and nimble but, as they get bigger, have difficulty keeping decision quality high and fast. Leaders often slow down the process as their companies become less attentive and more bureaucratic.

I’ve seen many styles of decision-making in my work with many different types of leaders: some default to very fast on almost everything, and others like to think things through.

So, when it comes to decision-making, is it better to be fast or slow?

After seeing hundreds of CEOs and executives handle decision processes, the answer is clearly…it depends!

In a famous letter to shareholders, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos identified two categories of decisions:

Type 1 Decisions

These are a one-way door, requiring thoughtful analysis of 90% of the necessary information to make an appropriate decision. Once you’ve gone through there’s no going back without great consequence. Some examples:

  1. the location of a second manufacturing location for your business
  2. where to expand to internationally and who to partner with
  3. implementing a change to your compensation program that affects all your employees
  4. hiring a key executive
  5. whether to let a 20-year employee go – or give them one last chance.

Type 2 Decisions

These are a two-way door: you can enter and exit without long-term ramifications. These need 70% of the required information available and should be made as quickly, with as few people, as possible. For example: the initial price of a new product, where to hold the annual retreat, hiring a customer service rep or changing the layout of your website.

Bezos noted two things:

  1. Many people get it backwards as they become more bureaucratic and end up using Type 1 for almost every decision which slows them down and makes them less effective
  2. Some super-entrepreneurial companies use Type 2 for most decisions, which can get them in trouble.

You need to be really clear on when you need to use which process. And when you and your team need to be more conscientious and thorough.

The Challenge

When it comes to decisions…

  1. Where are you the bottleneck? What are a few Type 2 decisions you need to make that you can delegate to someone else?
  2. Where are you the risk? What Type 1 high-impact decisions do you need to think through more thoroughly? The ones that need more data or consultation with an expert.

Lawrence & Co’s work focuses on sustainable and enhanced growth for you and your business. Our diverse and experienced group of advisors can help your leaders and executive teams stay competitive through the use of various learning tools including workshops, webinars, executive retreats, or one-to-one coaching.

We help high-achieving leaders to have it all – a great business and a rewarding life. Contact us for simple and impactful advice. No BS. No fluff.


The Quarterly Strategic Planning Meeting

We’re already almost a quarter of the way through 2022 and I hope everything is going well for you.

This blog relates to having an effective quarterly strategic planning meeting with your team – to review your 90-day progress and to set your goals for the next 90 days. These meetings are a critical discipline:

  • To evaluate and be accountable for what you’ve done in the last 90 days.
  • To reset and realign around your annual plan because things change, learn something new; market conditions internal factors change.
  • To learn and improve to stay ahead of the curve and develop the team.

Preparation is Key

Organizing and running quarterly strategic planning meetings is a project that takes preparation and skill, to make good and effective use of your valuable time. The purpose is to mine and evaluate what Jim Collins calls the Brutal Facts - to determine how you are really performing, what’s working, and challenges and opportunities.

Ideally, you meet off site – or virtually - away from daily distractions.

The quarterly strategic planning Agenda

1. Review the last 90 days.

  • Financials and goals.
  • Talent:
    • How did team members perform and what needs adjusting?
    • How are you going to strengthen the team?
  • Culture:
    • Are you leading teams well or creating problems?
    • Review a mini pulse survey, two or three layers, deep to see what's going on, and how people are thinking and feeling now.
  • Core values:
    • Keep breathing life into your culture and core ideologies.
    • What actions can you take for more people to live and understand your values, purpose and BHAG more deeply?

2. Review, test and ideate the annual strategy.

  • How are you performing in context?
  • How are you going to evolve? Perhaps dig into the Five Forces, your flywheel or another concept or tool.

3. Debate and resolve big issues to align and move forward.

  • e.g.: A new policy, acquisition, strategic partnership or customer
  • Ask a team member to do a 10-minute presentation on the issue, then debate to get the best ideas.
  • Align and make a decision.

4. Refresh or learn new skills.

  • Ahead of the meeting, ask the team to read a book, relevant to what you want or need to do to win, this year.
  • Discuss what you’ve learned and how to apply it in your organization.
  • Choose a new title to discuss at the next quarterly meeting.

5. Set the next 90-day execution plan.

  • Identify and align on priorities and goals.
  • Three-to-five smart priorities for the company, the departments and individuals.

The Challenge

  • What enhancements do you need to do to make your quarterly meeting more impactful?

If you need help to prepare for and run an effective quarterly or annual meeting, our experienced advisors are ready to help.

For more about quarterly planning execution meetings, listen to Episode 91 of The Growth Whisperers.


Lawrence & Co’s work focuses on sustainable and enhanced growth for you and your business. Our diverse and experienced group of advisors can help your leaders and executive teams stay competitive through the use of various learning tools including workshops, webinars, executive retreats, or one-to-one coaching.

We help high-achieving leaders to have it all – a great business and a rewarding life. Contact us for simple and impactful advice. No BS. No fluff.


The Weekly Leadership Team Meeting

The Weekly Team Meeting can be the most hated, boring event.

These fall-asleep, get-your-email-done, ramble-on-reports meetings happen because the person in charge has failed to remember the purpose of a weekly meeting and to bring the most important conversation to the table.

Done right, the weekly team meeting is where the real momentum and traction happens. It can motivate, energize and help your team to stay aligned and focused on what matters most.

The primary purpose and structure of the meeting is to refocus or recalibrate to make sure you hit the goals set at your quarterly meetings.

Here’s the framework to make that happen:

Keep it tight

  • 60 to 90 minutes, maximum two-hours.
  • Assign someone to run the meeting and manage time.
  • Use a timer to make sure everyone reporting stays succinct and has equal time.
  • Close on time.

Note: The length of the meeting depends on the size of, and what works for, an individual business. Set a time for each section of the meeting and don’t go over.

Set a positive tone

  • Start with a win. What's a highlight? How does it relate to the core values?
  • Connect and check in with each other. Tell the truth and rate where you are from zero to ten.

Track the numbers

  • What are the numbers and critical KPIs?
  • What's red? Amber? Green?

These results may create other questions for the collective intelligence part later in the meeting. e.g., Why are sales dropping?

  • Review quarterly priorities. and company-level goals and possibly, executive- or team-level goals.

Review progress against quarterly priorities

Are you on track, in terms of the top three-to-five quarterly priorities set for the company?

  • What progress have you made on that quarterly priority?
  • Where are you be stuck and need some assistance?
  • What are you going to do next?

If you have no progress to report that means nothing happened in the last seven days.

Review customer or employee data

Pay attention to information. Even if you don’t have sophisticated qualitative and the quantitative systems or eNPS, this should be a best practice.

  • What have you heard in the marketplace?
  • Do you hear anything different from customers or employees/new hires?

Review collective intelligence

These are strategic team discussions or debates and at least 30 minutes of a 60-to-90 minute meeting when you use the smartest brains in the room to troubleshoot or figure out the critical things you need to do to move ahead. For example:

  • Gather feedback on a new model around people and strategy.
  • Address short-term tactical issues
  • Address items in the parking lot or things held for a future time.
  • For example, a different team member presents a topic (perhaps every second week).

Tune up regularly

  • Be disciplined. Refine and update your weekly agendas to make sure they stay efficient and fresh.
  • If they get a little rough, don't worry about it. Get a couple people to tighten up and reset the agenda.

The Challenge

  • What can you do to make your weekly meetings one of the most valuable meetings of the week?

For more, listen to Episode 93 of The Ghost Whisperers podcast.

And for more tips on delivering great meetings:

Blog: 12 Tips for Better Business Meetings

Blog: Team Meetings, Debates and the Power of Bowling Balls

Podcast: How to Leverage Collective Intelligence

Podcast: The Seven Best Practices for Weekly Meetings


Lawrence & Co’s work focuses on sustainable and enhanced growth for you and your business. Our diverse and experienced group of advisors can help your leaders and executive teams stay competitive through the use of various learning tools including workshops, webinars, executive retreats, or one-to-one coaching.

We help high-achieving leaders to have it all – a great business and a rewarding life. Contact us for simple and impactful advice. No BS. No fluff.


monthly leadership meeting

The Monthly Leadership Meeting

In many companies, there’s often a gap between their highly functioning quarterly planning and the weekly meetings. So, let’s talk about a specific structure for the Monthly Leadership Meeting. A half to full-day opportunity to do a deeper dive into important tactical or strategic discussions, that you don’t get to in weekly meetings or in overloaded quarterly meetings.

1. Calibrate and catch up

We often forget about what's going on and get lost in the problems of the day, so the monthly leadership meeting forces you out of that day-to-day to get back on track.

It’s a chance to get support and insights, and then recalibrate. In order to achieve what you need to by the end of the quarter.

Properly done, these meetings keep you in touch with what’s really going on in the business and are a check-in to see if you are on track with your quarterly, company-level goals.

2. Deep financial review

A line-by-line, grind-through of the income statement, the balance sheet, and the cash flow. Ask a lot of questions to figure out what to do in order to perform better next month. There should be a notable number of action items after this review.

  • What's working, what's not working?
  • What are you going to do differently going forward?
  • Who is going to do what by when?

3. Department-level review

People in departments often run on their own, so this is where everyone comes back together to give updates, and to keep things in sync between departments. This benefits the CEO and executives, and creates peer pressure to do well. This closes any gaps between what people are actually doing versus their commitments.

Depending on the size of the business, you may invite three to six people from each department to join you for a specific time, to report on how they are doing with their priorities, answer questions and make decisions.

4. Customer & employee feedback review

Zoom out to look at what’s really going on with key stakeholders:

  • What are customers saying that's good? What's not good?
  • What are you hearing from employees?
  • What might you need to tweak in your plans right now?

Qualitative and quantitative data is needed to be in tune with the environment, internally and externally. For example, a net promoter score (quantitative) and 4 Questions for customers (qualitative) for one-on-one feedback.

5. Collective intelligence

Dedicate two to six hours of the meeting to tap into the collective brainpower in the room, to push a project forward, solve a problem, make a decision, or get resources and support.

  • Ask a team member to make a presentation.
  • Dig into projects that you're working on or need to figure out.
  • Brainstorm stuck points, or whatever is needed to do to make a project successful.
  • Get realigned.

One client in India flew 40 people in from across the country for full-day monthly meetings to tap into collective intelligence. It's a time when middle managers get to grow and develop, to work with directors and executives, to understand what's going on, to see different things and work with peers on projects.

The Challenge

  • What can you do to either start or notably enhance the monthly meeting with your key people?

Want to hear more? Listen to Episode 92 of The Growth Whisperers.

And for more tips on great meetings:

Blog: 12 Tips for Better Business Meetings

Blog: Team Meetings, Debates and the Power of Bowling Balls

Episode 93: The Weekly Leadership Team Meeting

Podcast: How to Leverage Collective Intelligence


Lawrence & Co’s work focuses on sustainable and enhanced growth for you and your business. Our diverse and experienced group of advisors can help your leaders and executive teams stay competitive through the use of various learning tools including workshops, webinars, executive retreats, or one-to-one coaching.

We help high-achieving leaders to have it all – a great business and a rewarding life. Contact us for simple and impactful advice. No BS. No fluff.


types of a-players

Types of A-Players

Did you know there are four different types of A-Players? It's an important insight to understand as you manage your team.

To re-cap a previous blog post about the cost of not having A-Players on your team:

  • An A-Player fits your culture well and delivers consistently excellent results. In school terms, they would get a 90% or higher grade on both. They are creative and efficient, and you love working with them.
  • A B-Player fits the culture very well but doesn’t consistently get an A grade on the quality of their work or hitting deadlines. They are productively good.
  • A C-Player doesn’t achieve the expected results and they don't fit the culture.

There are 4 types of A-Players:

1. Toxic A-Player

This A-Player gets awesome results but doesn’t fit the culture. Often referred to as a high-performing jerk, this person creates stress or drama in the organization because they operate under a different belief or behavior system. While they usually don't or won't, they need to be given a chance to step up and fit the culture. Otherwise, you need to help them to find a new home that’s a better fit.

I once worked with a woman on a support team that processed orders. In the busiest month when 20% of annual company business got done, the team stayed late to catch up. This A-Player was so good, she was done by four o’clock and went home. In a company with a core value of teamwork - where everyone chipped in to help one another - that created a lot of tension and frustration. Her manager talked to her, but she wouldn’t budge from her view that it wasn’t her problem that everyone else was too slow. After she flatly refused to support her team - to live the core values - she had to go.

One client had an employee who was the best truck driver in his fleet. This guy could deliver stuff across Canada, in all kinds of tough conditions, and maintained his vehicle well. He was toxic because his aggressive driving brought two or three complaint calls a month, inconsistent with the company brand. He had to go.

2. A1 A-Player

An outstanding, solid, reliable fit. They are happy and masterful in their role and may continue to be for the next 20 years. You want a lot of these people in your business.

They are not necessarily promotable, and they may not want to rise to the next level. Because of that, some may think they are not A-Players but that’s not true.

My father was an A-Player mechanic. He did high quality work, had integrity, got the job done, and took good care of the customers. But he had zero interest in moving up into management and was happy staying in his role.

What to watch for: Make sure their skills stay relevant, for the role, to continue to stay an A-Player, over time.

3. A2 - promotable one level.

This is someone who can move up one or two levels or increase their breadth.

Like a salesperson who has potential to be a manager, or someone who runs one team or location who could lead another, or a director of finance who could be a CFO.

Not necessarily today, or even next year, but you can see another step for them that’s worthy of investment.

4. A3 - promotable two+ levels

These are your future senior leaders. Super-motivated, driven and willing to push ahead two or more levels, you can spot these high-potential people rising up through organizations.

You want to invest in them and help them to grow.

What to watch for: We can sometimes be too enamoured and over-promote these keen people too soon, causing them to fail because they weren’t ready.

Assess for Success

When you think about taking someone to the next level, be sure they are ready.

  • Evaluate where they stand in their current role.
  • Test and try before you buy.

Give people projects that are consistent with the next role to see how they do.

At every quarterly and annual planning session, when you set everyone’s top three-to-five priorities for the next 90 days, help people to take on projects that are going to challenge them, or give them a taste of the next level, to see how they perform.

We worked with a company, on the other side of the world, on succession for a CEO, with two potential candidates. Although five or ten years out, we wanted to lay the groundwork and give them opportunities to grow. We assigned them additional projects and gave them coaching. After a couple of quarters, it was clear there was only one contender who moved up several notches in their role in nine months. The other one didn’t, which is okay, because he was thriving in his current role.

  • Use a Topgrading™ scorecard for the new role and evaluate the candidates against it and where they stand on the 50 different competencies.

Don’t forget, this is also a test drive for the person to try and see how they like it. Although many people are motivated, they may find they are not suited for the next big job.

This is a chance for both of you to find out without making a bigger commitment.

The Challenge

  • How can you identify the types of A-Players in your organization - whether they want to stay, or to grow and to move up?
  • How can you help those who are promotable get to the next level?
  • How can you support those who are happy where they are?

And what is the plan to help them either be the best they can be in their current role, or to get ready to move up?

For more about the types of A-Players, listen to Episode 89 of The Growth Whisperers.


Lawrence & Co’s work focuses on sustainable and enhanced growth for you and your business. Our diverse and experienced group of advisors can help your leaders and executive teams stay competitive through the use of various learning tools including workshops, webinars, executive retreats, or one-to-one coaching.

We help high-achieving leaders to have it all – a great business and a rewarding life. Contact us for simple and impactful advice. No BS. No fluff.