Re-Imagining a More Productive Year-End

I despise year-ends.

I'm not talking about the Holiday season or turning the calendar to a New Year...you know I like to poke the bear but come on, I enjoy time with family and friends as much as anyone this time of year.

I'm talking about the accepted norms of how we treat business year-ends. That's what I've grown to despise.

You know what I'm talking about...

• Year-end planning

• 12-month performance reviews

• Long meetings with presentations

We get in the habit of saving any reflection, evaluation, and planning exercises for the end of the year and we succumb to the feeling that ‘business is done’ or ‘strategy is executed’ in 12-month increments.

Is that really the best model to promote future success? And are 12-month increments the most conducive to long-term results?

Look, I'm always asking "why?" and tinkering with new ways of doing things...

Today, I'd like to take you inside one of my recent "mental whiteboarding" exercises where I asked:

"What would a more productive and intentional year-end look like?"

I arrived at some interesting conclusions... let's dive in.

How did we get here?

Do you know what corporate year-ends and Hallmark Holidays have in common?

They're both artificially developed.

Year ends exist because we needed a tie-up and cut-off point to report to the IRS or lenders, for example.

Line up that cut-off point with the Holiday season and what results?

A month of slowing activity, more meetings, year-end planning sessions, and so forth...

So for decades, our businesses have run on these 12-month cycles based on arbitrary deadlines and it seems like no one has stopped to ask, "Is this really what's best for us?"

I'm happy to be that person!

Viewing Year-End Through a New Lens

Look, I'm not suggesting year-end reflection and planning meetings are useless activities—because they're not.

But when I asked myself, "What would it look like to run the most productive, progressive, and successful organization?", I came to some different conclusions.

1. Evaluating strategy execution shouldn't be a once-a-year thing.

The most successful organizations run their business and transform it at the same time. They execute a strategy.

That means revisiting strategic plans shouldn't be a once-a-year thing reserved for the couple of weeks between Thanksgiving and New Year.

Evaluating, monitoring, and if needed, adjusting strategy execution should be happening all the time.

• In leadership meetings

• In messages from the CEO

• In weekly 1 on 1's

• In response to client feedback or learnings

• In response to market trends or sudden shifts

I’m not saying the firm’s overall strategy should be revisited or re-designed often—because it shouldn’t.

I’m saying the execution of strategy (strategic plans) should be monitored and evaluated on an ongoing basis.

If executing strategy is the most important thing we can do as an organization, evaluating if we’re making progress needs to be a top priority.

2. Who said 12 months is best?

Is 12 months really the best time interval to evaluate things like business performance and individual performance? I'd argue it's not.

At Baker Tilly, it took us a couple of years to design and implement a new strategy. Even more so, it took another couple of years for that strategy to be in full swing and produce outsized results.

In the business world, I believe 12 months is often too soon to fully see the effectiveness of a strategy initiative or a person being tasked with building something intentional within the organization.

Now, I'm not saying we have to wait multiple years to evaluate everything. There are always going to be markers of success (or not) along the way.

But when it comes to strategy and the things that enable strategy, I'd argue that bi-annual or tri-annual reviews might be more conducive to evaluating and measuring performance. I'd apply the same to evaluating individual performance, by the way!

Forcing ourselves to make decisions on strategy initiatives and team member performance every 12 months may be prohibiting us from reaping the benefits that long-term initiatives can bring.

3. How can we make more things real-time?

In the accounting profession, we've long provided information in incremental reports—think quarterly statements and annual reviews.

What about providing information in real-time dashboards?

Isn't that what clients really want? Access to information at their fingertips?

And how can we apply this idea to our organizations so that information about strategy, transformation initiatives, organizational performance, and individual performance can be accessed and monitored in real-time?

I recognize it might not be possible to create a dashboard for a team member's performance, but what about spending time discussing performance and checking in on initiatives on a semi-weekly or monthly basis?

Now we could have 11 (if not more) additional touchpoints to evaluate, improve, and make adjustments to performance throughout the year.

The more we can move information sharing and monitoring to be real-time actions that anyone can take at any time, the more we free up our time together in meetings to be focused on the future—what do we do with that information?

Doesn't that seem like a better formula for success? Sure does to me.

Consider for yourself...

It's not that the way we've come to generally approach year-end is wrong...

My question is: Is it really optimal?

So, I encourage you to think about your firm's approach to this time of year. Or in your professional career, is the way you approach year-end optimal?

Take yourself through the same whiteboard exercise...

If you removed the stop-gap of the traditional year-end process, what would you do differently?

I'm curious to hear what you come up with. Send me a reply with anything you'd change about your end-of-year approach and let's see what new ideas we can create together.

With intention,
Alan D Whitman