I'm writing this the day after our Q3 executive planning session, and I’m still a little Zoom fatigued. But this may have been one of our best yet.
Here's the thing about running a business: it's actually pretty easy to keep things moving. Check the boxes, hit the deadlines, respond to the emails. But sometimes you have to stop the machine and ask uncomfortable questions.
Yesterday, we did exactly that. Here’s what worked.
The mighty agenda
We sent out our planning agenda three weeks in advance. This type of meeting requires time to process beforehand. You can't walk into a room and expect meaningful strategic thinking on the fly. Everyone needed a chance to reflect on the previous quarter.- Did what we worked on last quarter actually get completed?
- If not, why—and should it move forward?
- What does each department need to be successful in alignment with our focus pillars?
- What does the company need to hit our goals?
- Are we focused on the right things?
👉 Action time: Send an agenda 2-3 weeks before your quarterly planning session.
The goldmine survey
Before the meeting, we also sent a survey to all our managers. Some of the questions:- Are we solving the right problems?
- What kind of company do we want to be in 3-5 years?
- What bets are we making (or should we make) to grow next year?
- Where are we winning, and how can we double down?
- Why do our top clients stay?
- Why don't prospects convert?
- What are our competitors doing that we're not?
The feedback from this survey shaped the entire second half of our session. It gave us easy access to talk about the things that usually stay unsaid in meetings. The strategies that aren't working. The initiatives that feel forced. The gaps we've been ignoring.
👉 Action item: Send a survey to people who will be, and won't be in your quarterly planning session but have valuable insights.
Kill your darlings
There’s nothing high-performers love more than a stacked to-do list. New opportunity? Add it. Good idea? Let's try it. Someone suggests something that might work? Sure, why not.
But you'd be surprised how fast a bloated to-do list shrinks when you challenge it directly. Like any well-crafted story, you have to cut characters, plot lines, and scenes that don’t serve the end goal—even if they’re good on their own.
We had initiatives that looked good on paper. Projects that made sense individually. But when we lined them all up against our actual capacity and our real impact goals? A lot of them didn't make the cut. We looked at every initiative on the table and asked a simple question: does this get us closer to our 1-year goals, or 3-10-year vision?
If the answer was no—or even "maybe"—it didn't make it to our Q3 rocks. This exercise was brutal and liberating at the same time. Brutal because we had to kill some darlings. Liberating because suddenly our path forward became a lot less crowded.
👉 Action item: If an initiative doesn't drive toward your 1-year, 3-year, or 10-year vision, cut it.
Back to the basics, again and again
When your team is moving fast, misalignment creeps in. It happens gradually, then all at once. Someone starts pulling in one direction, someone else in another, and before you know it, you're working hard but not together.
Revisiting our core—who we are, who we serve, and why we exist—keeps us sharp. It's not about the words on our website. It's about using those words as a filter for every decision we make.
👉 Action item: Revisit your mission, vision, and values every quarter.
Call on strategy support
The goal of every quarterly planning meeting is to leave with a clear, actionable plan. To help you connect the dots, we created a sample marketing strategy. Take a look and see what alignment in action looks like.
