Who should facilitate your upcoming quarterly planning session? Or any of your annual planning or strategic thinking sessions?
If you are a start up or have less than $7M in annual revenues, you might have no choice but to facilitate your own sessions. However, a typical mistake that many CEOs of larger growth firms make is to facilitate their own sessions when they have the financial ability to bring in a facilitator. When working with people, it is more important to focus on being effective rather than being efficient. It is very hard for CEOs to be effective at facilitating their own sessions for these reasons:
Often times a CEO will opt to facilitate the strategic thinking session in order to save money. That would be "penny wise and pound foolish." When you gather your executive team of 7 to 10 into a session for a day or two for strategic thinking and planning, the cost for a professional facilitator pales in comparison to the cost of taking these executives out of the field and their jobs for 2 days. This is why when I am asked by companies larger than $10mm in revenues with 50 or more employees if they should use an outside facilitator, I strongly advise them to do so. You will probably do well facilitating your own sessions. And you will do even better with an impartial facilitator. How important are the outcomes from your planning sessions? Can you afford to have less than optimal outcomes from your planning sessions?
Effective versus Efficient. Time to choose Effectiveness over Efficiency!
How to Conduct an Annual Planning Meeting
Annual Planning: 9 Tips to Focus & Align Your Team with a Great Plan
How CEOs Can Avoid High-Cost Mistakes in Annual Planning
Best Practices for Annual Planning
Rhythm Systems Annual Planning Resource Center