5 ingredients for successful business reviews
Avoid wasting millions of dollars of executive time by running effective C-suite business reviews in the Office of the CEO. Get it right and everyone comes out energized with clear direction and defined action plans. Get it wrong and everyone comes out demoralized and confused about what comes next.
The cost of CEO time is estimated at up to $4,800 per hour for top companies. Trust me, you don’t want to waste their time. That’s why it’s important to nail your business reviews, which can happen up to 7 times over with your COO, CPO, CTO, CIO, GC, CRO and CMO.
Here are 5 ingredients for successful business reviews:
1. Engaging Pre-Reads
Before the business review takes place, ensure that your business leader prepares pre-reads to help all meeting participants get up to speed. This can include an executive summary, wins and celebrations, roadmaps, standardized charts, risks and blockers, and open questions.
2. Accurate and Actionable Charts
Charts that show the health of the business unit need to be accurate and actionable. Ideally there is double and even triple checking of the numbers before the dashboard is shown in the business review. Written commentary should accompany, along with proposed action plans.
3. Defined Open Questions and Decision Points
Open questions and decision points should be articulated before the business review starts, so that the meeting is highly productive. Record answers and decisions, while playing timekeeper to keep the group on track.
4. Clear Action Plans
If you hold a business review but there is no commitment to action, then you’ve just wasted a bunch of time. Make sure you collect actions and owners with no ambiguity about who is doing what by when.
5. Successful Follow-Up
Follow-up is key to make sure actions are executed properly. Enter all actions into your master project tracker or workflow management system and check in on the status of these actions well before your next business review.
There you have it - 5 elements to running effective business reviews. Combine these together to uplevel C-suite effectiveness and avoid kerfuffles where you waste C-suite time.
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