Key learning outcomes:

Article:

In a small business, having your team working as effectively as possible can mean the difference between success and failure. It is important to understand how the impact of any issues, disagreements or disruptions will be much greater in a smaller business than in a large corporation. Even if just one or two of your team members are not working as effectively as they could, the impact on your overall business productivity and profitability is substantial.

Research shows that having everyone in a team working towards the same goals is an essential ingredient of an effective team. A team planning day will allow you to gain buy-in from all team members with respect to these goals. This article gives you a step-by-step guide to formatting and facilitating the day. You will find some of the topics included in the planning day are covered in depth in individual learning articles and we suggest you work through each of these before conducting your session. You will find the links throughout the article and also in the top section under essential previous learning.

Step one: Think about the logistics

There are a number of issues you need to think about before you start:

• Where will the session be held? Do you have an appropriate space at your workplace or will you need to find another location?

• What equipment will you need, for example, projector, screen, whiteboard or flip chart?

• When will be the best time to conduct the planning day? It is essential that everyone in your team can attend; therefore, you need to consider how this will work for your business. Can you close for the day? Can a temporary staff member be hired for the day? Can you hold the session on a non-working day?

• Who will lead the day? It can be helpful to have someone from outside the business facilitate the day. This makes you one of the team rather than being the leader and can encourage more open and robust discussion.[wlm_ismember]

Step two: Pre-frame the day

It is essential that you pre-frame the planning day well in advance. You need to explain why you want to conduct the day, how important it will be for everyone to be there and how you feel it will benefit the team and the business. For example, you might schedule the day for the beginning of the year to set the direction for the coming 12 months, or you might be looking to expand to a new location and want to develop a shared leadership culture. It is important to communicate that for the day to be successful, input from everyone is valuable and it will be a positive experience. The more energy and enthusiasm that goes into preparing for the day, the more positive your team will be from the outset.

Step three: Preparation

The more preparation you do for the day, the better. If you are using an outside party to facilitate the day you will need to ensure that they are fully briefed. Depending on your industry and business you may need to conduct some research. Some examples might include a market share analysis, performance history or some financials. The important thing is that you simply present the facts, and avoid stating your opinions or beliefs, in order to stimulate discussion.

Step four: Getting started

• Set-up
  • Plan to break the day into three or four sessions. People find it difficult to concentrate for too long without a break. You will find that your team have sustained energy levels if you break for morning tea, lunch and then afternoon tea.
  • Ensure that everyone has pen and paper.
  • Test your equipment and make sure everyone is positioned around the table or in the room in such a way that they can see and hear everything.
  • We strongly suggest a no-mobile-phone zone for these types of meetings.

• Agenda
  • Always start the day by giving an overview of what will be covered. We use the following example at Absolute Best:
    • Big picture thinking
      • What do we want to get out of the process?
      • What are our core values?
      • What are our team standards?
      • What does success look like in 12 months?
    • What is our current reality?
      • Market information
      • SWOT Analysis
    • Our plan
      • Goal review
      • Where are our opportunities?
      • What are our options?
      • What are we going to do?

To get the best out of everyone, it is important to start and finish on time. It is also important to set any housekeeping rules at the beginning of the day. Here are some of those we run through:

• No phones on during the sessions.
• When someone is talking, everyone listens.
• Every opinion is valid – show respect for each other.
• No idea is crazy – we are going to start thinking big and can fine tune later.
• Run through where the breaks are in the agenda.
• The day is all about setting a positive direction for the business, so be positive!

Step five: Format for the day

• What does everyone want to get out of the day?

It is important to get everyone to think about the outcomes they want from the day. Get each person to individually write down four or five key points. Then go around the table and get everyone to share what they hope to gain. Write them down on a whiteboard or flip chart. You will find that there are some common themes and that the exercise will set a positive tone for the day. You may want to get everyone to focus on the ones they feel are most important by circling them on the board or highlighting them in a different colour. Having two or three key points will help provide focus and direction for the day.

• Identifying the core values of the team.

These values will guide the behaviour and actions of those in the team once back in the workplace. It is essential for an effective team to identify the values that are shared and agreed. Our detailed learning article “Core Values” will take you through the steps to completing this section of the planning day. It is important that you read through this prior to conducting your planning day.

• Setting team standards.

This follows on nicely from the discussion on values. The key question to ask everyone is “what do we really stand for?” This is a safe environment for the team to set and agree on standards of behaviour within the group and in dealing with customers. Once again you will find a complete learning article to guide you through this section of the planning day. Either click through to “Setting Team Standards” here or at the top of the article.

• This is a good time for a short 10–15 minute break.

• Big picture goals.

This is where you get the team to start thinking about what success might look like in 12 months time. You want them to think bigger picture and not to put limits on their thinking. Once again, have everyone think about what they feel are the three most important goals. Then go around the table and ask all team members to explain each one to the group. Write the goals on the whiteboard or flip chart. The aim of the discussion is to come up with a list of about 10 to 12 goals. It is important to get input from everyone. It is not necessary to have a lengthy discussion at this time about what can or cannot be done; this can happen in the goal review stage. Remind everyone to keep thinking of the “big picture” – you do not want to get too caught up in details here.

• Defining the current reality.

This is where you will run through any facts and figures that you have prepared. Once again it is important to simply report the facts and allow the team to discuss any implications rather than using them to justify any position that you might have. This is also the time when you will conduct a team SWOT analysis. This will help the team to define the strengths and weaknesses of the business, and it will also allow for identification of opportunities and potential threats. Our learning article of the same name will give you a framework and template to work from. Click here for the SWOT analysis, or you can find it at the top of the article.

• This is now the logical time for a 30–40 minute lunch break. Ideally, get everyone to physically move from the table to allow them to be refreshed and energised for the next section of the day.

• The final half of the day is devoted to developing the plan.
  • Firstly, as a group you need to review the list of goals based on any new information or findings that might have come out of the previous section of the day. Ideally, you want to narrow the list down to the three to five most important goals. Do this by going through them one by one, with a group discussion on whether the goal will really have a big impact, if it is realistic and whether it is measurable. You will find that the team will agree on the three to five most important goals.
  • The next step is to brainstorm as a group all the different actions and ideas that may work in helping move the team forward in achieving these goals. At this stage you want volumes of ideas. Explain that you will all go through the list again, but at this stage no idea is crazy! Again you want to encourage big picture thinking.
  • After you have a good list, it is a good time for a 5–10 minute break.
  • Now the list needs to be reviewed again to identify the ideas that will have the greatest impact. Once you have highlighted them, you can look at those high-impact activities that will be easy to implement and those that will be harder to implement. You should now have a good short list of ideas that will all have a positive impact on the business.
  • Lastly, every member of the team needs to take responsibility for putting one idea into action. Get everyone to start writing down ideas for how they are going to implement their idea, what they might need to do, what help that they might need from others and who else might need to be involved. It is a good idea to have a brief discussion with all the team members and record their initial thoughts. Everyone will then need to go away and put their action plan in writing for distribution to the group.

• Wrap up the day with a summary and next steps. Thank everyone for their participation and set a time for when you will be circulating a report with all of the information gathered from the day. Set a deadline for everyone to submit their action plans for inclusion into this report.

Step six: Keep up the momentum

From experience we find that you are best to keep deadlines short and communication frequent in the initial stages after the planning meeting. You want to have your document from the day distributed no later than one week after the meeting. Additionally, you need to commit to regular update meetings. We suggest that these are conducted monthly to monitor progress and keep everyone accountable for their contributions. These meetings can usually be conducted in 45–60 minutes.

You will find the more you involve your team in planning, the more engaged and motivated they will be to work towards the business’s success. It takes a lot of hard work to put a planning day together, but we can assure you that the benefits will make it very worthwhile. Use this team planning day guide in conjunction with our other “Business Planning” articles.[/wlm_ismember]

[wlm_nonmember]Would you like to see the whole article?

Would you like to start driving positive changes in your business? Would you like to see increased productivity and profitability? Of course you would!

As part of our commitment to being a low cost yet highly effective service to help owners and managers of small to medium sized business, we are now offering the first month of your membership for just $1! This means you will get full access to all of the learning articles, tools and tips that our website has to offer and with a commitment to upload at least another 150 learning articles through 2015 there is also plenty more learning on the way. On top of this you will also receive our weekly newsletter to keep you updated on new learning for the week and much, much more!

You can cancel at any time, however, if you see the value in what we’re offering (and we’re sure you will!) your membership will automatically continue after your trial at the low cost of just $19.95 per month. So what are you waiting for? For just $1 you are getting full access to all of our content for 30 days risk-free, so come on and join our community today![/wlm_nonmember]

 

Success is giving it your Absolute Best!