Is your team aligned to start the New Year
Here are some key questions that every business owner and CEO should be asking themselves this time of year:
1. Have me and my team defined our financial goals and supporting key strategies for the year?
2. Do these goals and strategies align with my longer term "what does great look like" (Optmizing Your Company Exit Valuation) for my business?
3. Does my leadership team understand our goals and strategies for the New Year?
4. Have I met (collectively and individually) with members of my leadership team to help them understand and embrace the role they play in enabling and supporting successful plan implementation?
5. Does my team's incentive plan align with driving the right behaviors to ensure the effective focus and implementation of our goals and strategies?
6. Have I established a mechanism for an effective cadence (daily, weekly or monthly) of monitoring and reporting on our progress?
These are just some of the healthy questions a good business leader is asking themselves and dialoging with key members of their team. If you answer "no" to any of the questions, now is the time to strengthen how you're leading your team. No company ever created great shareholder value or exited one day at a premium valuation by having a misaligned team. Whether you are thinking about exiting your business successfully in just a few years or even 10 years, now is the time to ensure you have value creating alignment with and amongst your team.
Here is a basic tool (Annual Team Goal Cascading Template) I used in my businesses so I could see how everyone's focus for the New Year was adding up to the bigger picture. In most cases, I built this template with my key leaders so it helped them better understand our bigger picture, understand the importance of their focus and gave them an appreciation and understanding of their peers so they could act as a team in delivering our desired results...and build our company value.