How to build engaging weekly reviews (for operations leaders)

In this week’s issue, I’ll break down four steps to building your weekly business plan reviews I’ve learned from managing supply chain operations in companies as small as $200M to companies with over $1B in revenue.

If you can learn how to do this well, you will deliver results while increasing your team’s learning of their functions, the organization, and their leadership capabilities.

The problem is some leaders have confused check-ins with business reviews and miss a significant opportunity to sharpen their team with this powerful process.

I became a big believer in this process after some setbacks and my journey to improve my operating process

In building my process, I was strongly influenced by Alan Mulally’s and Adam Witty’s work synthesized in their book, Relentless Implementation.

Below are the steps I’d take to set up your business plan review.

Step 1: Work with your accounting/finance leaders on relevant metrics your team affects.

Surprisingly, a lot of teams do not know what general ledger cost types are affected by their activities…

So start there by asking your accounting/finance leaders the following questions:

• Which general ledger or cost types does your team affect?

• Which of those cost types are material in their opinion?

• Which activities in your team affect those cost types?

Simply aligning on these areas will give you clarity on what to focus on.

Step 2: Decide who on your team owns the cost types you want to track.

“If everyone owns it no one owns it” is a popular quote related to this.

Now you know what’s important to track, Simply decide which of your team members is responsible for those metrics and let them know. There are many ways to do this if you have not done it already, here are some tips I’d recommend.

• List each cost type.

• List the owner for each cost type.

• List the target from your budget or forecast for each cost type.

Depending on the team dynamics and cohesive maturity, you should consider discussing this step with your HR business partner in advance as this will be a change the team may not be used to.

Step 3: Decide on the elements to track for the reviews.

Some teams already have tools while others use spreadsheets.

That’s not as important as what is tracked because that will drive the quality of the discussion.

A simple recommendation I’ve used and leads to good insights is to see the following on each key cost type being discussed

• The target for the month: This should be linked to the budget or forecast.

• Actual at the point in the month: This should be where the metric is as of the review period.

• The forecasted result at the end of the month: This is the hardest and is where the metric should be when the month ends.

• Business changes in the prior week: This represents internal or external developments the team should be aware of.

• Forecast Drivers: These are assumptions underpinning the forecast.

• Forecast Risks: These are things that could adversely affect the forecast.

• Forecast Opportunities: These are things that could positively affect the forecast.

Step 4: Trust The Process.

Depending on the experience in the team, this process will take time to mature so it’s important to create a safe space for that to happen.

It may mean some of the following:

• Working with the team to get the relevant data.

• Creating templates to support the process.

• Coaching the team on thinking through assumptions and drivers.

• Giving them time to build the right processes to support affecting the metrics in a positive manner

• and so forth.

Just remember that this is also a team development process which when done well, your weekly business reviews will:

• Increase their learning

• Give them a chance to learn about the entire organization

• Help them through experience prepare them for the next stage of their careers

Thanks for reading.

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