Congratulations, you’re halfway through your year! Now’s the time you should be focused on your midyear business review, an essential check-in on — and check-up for — the goals you set in January. Your midyear business review is both a status update and a plan for the rest of the year.
How are you tracking to your year-end goals, and what do you need to do to ensure you meet, or exceed, those goals? You need answers, and you need them now, so you can position the second half of your year for success.
A midyear business review has several key elements. Use our Essential Elements of a MidYear Business Review checklist to guide you through the process.
The #1 reason for your midyear business review is to evaluate how you’re tracking to your year-end goals. Period. Take a hard look at the goals you set and determine whether current progress indicates you’ll close the distance in the next six months. Are you on track? Are you ahead of the game? Or do you have some more work to do?
What if your metrics aren’t giving you the answers you need? Then it’s time for a reset, to ensure you have actionable information to guide you as you enter the home stretch toward December 2019. Structure your metrics to deliver the real-time information that’s critical to understanding your progress and your distance-to-goal as well as how and where to adjust course if needed. To learn more about metrics, check out our blog post “Metrics: Know What Matters and Measure What Matters Most.”
What’s not working? What’s preventing you from reaching your goals? Dig deep to discover gaps and obstacles that are holding you back from achieving your year-end goals. Then build a plan to impact change and overcome those obstacles where you can, even if the obstacles themselves are beyond your direct control. Take action now!
All too often we get stretched too thin and aren’t able to invest the resources we thought we could toward our goals. Or perhaps you are maximizing the resources you have, but it’s just not enough. First things first, assess your priorities and where your year-end goals fit in. Maybe the new priorities you’ve taken on since January are distracting from achieving your year-end goals. In that case, it’s time to have the tough conversation about resetting priorities and refocusing time, money, and resources on your goals in the next six months. Otherwise, consider all areas in which you can make a meaningful shift. Where can reallocating resources benefit your progress and impact your ability to hit your goals? Do you need more IT investment? Do you need another expert at the table? Will more money make the difference? Look at where you can make a change with a specific ROI toward hitting your mark.
What’s new since January? Oh, just everything! The market, technology, compliance regulations, your competitors — the list goes on. Laser-focus on your original year-end goals isn’t an advantage if it blinds you to new opportunities. What’s changed since January that’s not only positively impacting your current goals, but also may be worth adding to your to-achieve list? Sometimes new opportunities are merely a boost in your progress, but sometimes they demand new goal-setting entirely.
Your goals aren’t set in stone. You may need a reassessment — for better or for worse. If you’re in good shape and ahead of schedule, look at what it will take to reach your stretch goal and set that as your new bar to strive for. Think you’ll blow away your stretch goal? Reach even higher! If you’re not tracking for success — and you’ve identified why —shifting the goal and pulling back may be required, to create a target that’s more realistic based on what you know now versus what you knew, or thought you knew, back in January.
The bottom line when it comes to midyear business reviews: Flexibility and focus are key. Pay attention to your progress and results to date, and be open to and intentional about making changes for the road ahead. We like the statement recently shared in a Forbes article on the topic midyear reviews: “slavish devotion to a plan may cause missed opportunities or even fatal pursuit of a flawed strategy.” So, yes, focus on your plan — but also yes, be flexible to making adjustments where they make the most sense for your business.
At Spinnaker, we’re the go-to resource for the real-time results you need now, and the lasting impact you depend on to strengthen your business in the future. Our expertise, agility, and first-hand business knowledge move your business forward. To find out more, connect with us today.