05/06/2021

How to Sustain Your Leadership Team’s Momentum Throughout the Year

Fact: Not every meeting needs decks

A few weeks ago, I had an online Q&A session with a senior executive following a keynote presentation I gave for her company’s annual senior leadership summit. Like a lot of organizations, this company has a senior leadership team conference at the beginning of the year – either fiscal or calendar – to lay out their themes, goals and plans for the next 12 months. The point of meetings like this is to get the leadership team aligned with the goals and position them to excite and engage their functional teams for the coming year.

When done well (and this one was), kick-off meetings are a great way to get the year off to a fast and exciting start. And, all too often, the air slowly leaks out of the excitement balloon as people get immersed in the day to day friction of actually getting things done. The recognition of this dynamic led to a really great question from the executive I was doing the Q&A with. “What, she asked me, do the best companies do to sustain their momentum on their annual plans in the months after the leadership kickoff meeting?”

I gave a two-part answer to her question and the second part lit up the chat thread with virtual shouts and huzzahs of online agreement. With that kind of encouragement, how could I not share my response with you, my faithful readers?

Please select this link to read the complete blog post from The Eblin Group.