Annual Planning: Does Your Plan Include Winning Moves?

I recently spoke at The Channel Company’s Best of Breed Conference in Atlanta. I had the opportunity to listen to other speakers and learn firsthand what other companies were thinking about and working on. AI, of course, was the big topic this year.

I particularly enjoyed a session led by Tomer Weingarten, the CEO and co-founder of SentinelOne. He shared that business owners should not consider profit to be their North Star. Rather, they should set a mission that their team will be excited to pursue as their North Star. Tomer was not suggesting that profit is not important–it is. However, we should not only be chasing profit.

annual planning

As you begin your annual planning session this year, you may be tempted to focus just on revenues, profit, and growth. Instead, take Tomer’s advice. First, focus on your long-term goal. We should all have a Big Hairy Audacious Goal (BHAG) that gives us a dream to pursue for the next 10-20 years and beyond! Then, to really drive growth, you need to work on having a few Winning Moves that will allow you to 2X your revenues over the next 3-5 years. These few Winning Moves should propel you towards your BHAG! Your journey should be inspiring and fruitful.

When you create a small handful of Winning Moves, your team will begin to visualize the path from where you are now to the amazing future you can build together. Conversely, if all you talk about in your session is making a revenue or profit number, your team’s imagination will not be sparked–and they may end up disengaged, disconnected, and disinterested in the future of the company. Having 1 to 3 Winning Moves is critical to your success. Chapter 2 of my Wall Street Journal Best Selling book, Rhythm: How to Achieve Breakthrough Execution and Accelerate Growth, provides a process to help you brainstorm and develop Winning Moves that are impactful while helping you also consider your team’s ability to execute them.

Devote at least 1 day of your annual planning session to think beyond the year ahead. Work on building a 2-5-year plan. What strategies can you create that will position you correctly that far down the road? Identify and mold a few ideas that will have a high impact on revenue growth while remaining easy and affordable to execute. These are your Winning Moves! As you let the creativity and passion flow, I promise your team will be excited to accompany you on your journey.