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

• 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.

Addi­tion­al Blogs

• The Pow­er of Cel­e­brat­ing & Iterating
• The Quar­ter­ly Strat­e­gy Plan­ning Meeting
• Annu­al Check-Up

Old­er Podcasts

• The 7 Mis­takes Lead­ers Make at Annu­al Strat­e­gy Meetings