In our last newsletter we spoke about taking the opportunity, as you were gathering the results and preparing for your year-end reviews, to take the time each year to think about and recognize those individuals, both present and in the past, that have made significant contributions to your personal and professional growth and development – Your Mentor.
The response was incredible, and I heard from many of you through my website https://www.3sixtymanagementservices.com, email correspondence, and a few calls about how you thought about and chose to recognize those individuals, both present and in the past, that have made significant contributions to your personal and professional growth.
Some of you choose unique and creative ways. Many a simple thank-you note, or quick call still works like a charm to recognize and thank them. For those mentors that have passed, keeping them in our thoughts, prayers, and in our minds will always be a way to recognize them. Each of you, adding your own personal touch to this recognition, was inspiring and very thoughtful. Thank you for including me.
The End of Year Review is this week’s newsletter.
THE STATE OF THE BUSINESS, THE STATE OF YOUR PEOPLE
The end of year review is a continuation of the mid-point review and is an opportunity to assess and discuss the progress of the goals that were set at the beginning of the performance cycle. This process should be done as a final year-end review for the business, as well as a formal year-end conversation with each of your people.
Although you should be providing ongoing feedback to your staff members and organization, the end of year review offers a more formal occasion to address any performance issues that may have arisen, and/or to discuss major shifts in work priorities that would affect the business and your ability to achieve your year-end plan and a vision to the future. It is also an opportunity to discuss progress made on the initiatives that were laid out to help achieve the goals. Finally, the end of year review is also an opportunity to note where support and additional resources might be necessary in the coming year.
The review process, done properly, will give you a wealth of knowledge to prepare you for your conversation. The most critical learning will always come from your firsthand experiences, your working knowledge of the business and your interaction and feedback with your people throughout the year.
So, let’s begin with some questions to ask yourself and your team on the elements that will be vital to successfully meeting your plan and making a positive contribution as you evaluate yourself, your people, and your organization at the year-end mark with an eye to achieving your plan and goals for 2023.
The evaluation process starts with a few simple but powerful questions:
1. Did you Start Right at the beginning of the year and have you Stayed Right during the many challenges to date?
2. Did you personally Approve a Good Plan?
- Understanding and approving the plan is key
- Did you build the plan based on targeted objectives?
- What are the levers/expectations at a profit center level that created the plan that ties into the overall Business Plan?
3. Did you Communicate the plan?
- The plan needs to be communicated at every level from the front-line individuals to the CEO to support and understand the plan.
- Everyone needs to understand their roles and responsibilities
- There must be daily, weekly, and monthly expectations for everyone and they must be monitored
4. Did you Organize your resources?
- Invest in training and development
- Did you have the right resources in place to achieve the plan, such as skilled personnel, supervisors, hourly and management employees to name a few.
5. Did we all work the plan?
- Know what needs to be done and work it every day
- Resource allocation – what are our support teams doing to help our people trying to execute the plan
6. Monitor and Adjust
- Use available reports and measures to insure plan adherence
- Use available shared resources to assist
- Have a strategic plan for remediation
Your year-end sessions with your people will also help them to gain a wealth of knowledge from your leadership team on the elements that will be vital to successfully meeting the organizations plan, their individual plan, and their ability to make a positive contribution. It will also serve as the foundation for the planning process for 2023.
As you’ve learned over the past months and during the sessions, everyone in your organization will need to contribute to the Company’s success. But how can you be successful leaders, contributors, and teammates? The key is to know what is expected of you and not to settle – and exceed those expectations.
Hopefully, it was determined during the planning process leading into 2022 that you would need Hopefully, it was determined during the planning process leading into 2022 that you would need to tailor a well-thought-out plan to Start Right – Stay Right. Now we are the point in which we discuss the implementation of the plan, and how we monitor and manage what happens and then navigate through the necessary adjustments. As you discuss the elements of the Business Plan during your session, you want to inspire and motivate each member to consider their role. This is an organization plan executed by individuals.
You and they will need to take ownership of it, building the changes needed and executing a plan in which you can validate results. Communicate the plan and the expectations to your people – make it achievable and set your people up for success. The quality of your plan will be determined by the execution – if you don’t hit plan, you either have a bad plan or poor execution. You are responsible for the management and success of your plan – own it.
Finally, I wanted to revisit the four key takeaways from this discussion on the importance of the Mid-Term and Year-end Review. They are:
- Build
- Validate
- Communicate
- Execute
Have a great review and again, you are responsible for the fulfillment and success of your plan. This means contributing to your people’s success. As you learn from the one-to-one discussions and personal interactions, it is vitally important to set clear expectations for the organization, mission, strategy, and goals. From here, your role as leaders is to give them the tools and training to meet these expectations and lastly, to motivate and educate your people – observe the excellence and correct the inefficiencies.
Have a great 2023 and BE THE ARCHITECT OF YOUR OWN DESTINY
For more information visit our website https://www.3sixtymanagementservices.com/. My book, Tighten The Lug Nuts, will also serve as a workbook for these important topics and discussions.
Finally, I am also a Forbes Contributor. I recently had an article in Forbes published titled, “Implementing three key strategies can help managers transform year-end performance reviews into a highly effective meeting.” https://hubs.li/Q01w1g-T0.
Visit our web site, https://3sixtymanagementservices.com, as well as my book, Tighten The Lug Nuts, for additional information.
Contact me at:
[email protected].
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