How to effectively plan your quarter for success

Welcome to the second half of 2023!

If you crushed the first half and are on track to hit your goals for this year…

Congrats! Keep it going and don’t forget to:

• Celebrate your wins and lessons learned

• Check and realign with your bigger vision

• Tune in with yourself for any unmet needs

If you didn’t crush it and fell off track…

Also congrats! Hit pause and recalibrate for the next sprint.

There are no failures, as long as you’re drawing the lessons and wisdom to move forward.

Here’s what you can do:

• Review your year and draw out the lessons

• Realign with your vision, values, and goals

• Regulate yourself and address your needs

• Redefine your direction and set a new plan

Now is the time to get back on track.

In today’s newsletter, I want to share with you the quarterly planning process I take my clients through to realign, refocus, and reset their game plans for success and fulfillment.

Note the last part there: success and fulfillment.

The desire for more success is natural and I’m all for honoring your desires.

But underneath the desire for success is always a deeper desire for fulfillment and meaning.

Until we create a business and life that allows us to experience deep fulfillment and meaning, no amount of success will feel like a true win.

If you’re in need of a mid-year reset and realignment, let’s dive in.

Quarterly Review

It’s easy to want to keep pushing forward.

But moving forward without taking the time to intentionally review how you got here, will only create reactive execution.

Reactivity attracts more reactivity and chaos.

Pause and reflect on your last quarter or half year:

• What are my wins or what worked well?

• What didn’t work well or go as I expected?

• What lessons have I learned from this?

• How am I feeling right now about all this?

Celebrate your wins and gains. Celebrate even harder your lessons.

If you have a team, send out a Quarterly Review form with similar questions to draw out their wins and lessons, both personal and also professional.

Review their responses.

Anything they see that you didn’t see?

Then do a deeper dive Strategic Quarterly Review:

• Review last quarter’s objectives (OKRs, Rocks, Targets)

• Categorize them into 3 buckets:

  • Not Completed

  • Completed

  • Completed but needs further action

For the “Not Completed” objectives, reflect on:

• What were the roadblocks?

• What did we learn?

• What can be done better?

For the “Completed” objectives, reflect on:

• What worked well?

• What did we learn?

• What should we keep doing?

For the “Completed but needs further action” objectives, reflect on:

• What worked well?

• What did we learn?

• What are the next steps?

What are the pending issues in the business we need to address next quarter?

Once you’ve done a deep review, put a pin on it.

Let’s get realigned before we start creating the new game plan for this next quarter.

Vision & Goals Alignment

Now review your North Star: your Vision, Mission, Values, and Goals.

If you’re North Star is still unclear, make it your priority to clarify it. You can check out my Strategic Vision Planner for that.

Are you still in alignment with your North Star?

This is important because if you’re not, you will continue to unconsciously self-sabotage your business and team.

Your highest self knows what feels aligned and what doesn’t.

If what you’re currently working on is not aligned with your vision and values, your unconscious patterns will keep getting in the way. It’s their way of hinting to you something doesn’t feel right.

Listen.

Slow down to the speed of wisdom and you’ll know exactly how to move forward faster and better.

If your current goals and objectives don’t feel aligned to the bigger vision, change them.

The path to your vision is rarely a straight clean path forward. It’s typically a path of constant redirection to stay aligned with the trajectory of the target.

I’ve seen entrepreneurs ignore their inner voices crying for alignment. They always paid the consequence in the end with time and energy.

Alignment always comes first.

Honor Your Needs

One of my favorite questions to ask my clients during quarterly strategic planning sessions is:

Is there anything YOU are needing right now that you’re neglecting?

When we ignore our core inner needs, our unconscious self will always find ways to self-sabotage and distract us from the current thing we’re focusing on until we meet those needs.

Check in with all areas of your life:

• Relationships

• Health

• Finances

• Purpose

• Spirituality

Is there anything on the back of your mind that’s taking up mental and emotional space?

Honor and address your needs.

The alignment and fulfillment you feel with yourself will create the space and energy for you to focus on this next quarter’s game plan.

Quarterly Planning

Now’s the time to create your game plan for this next quarter.

This part should be easy now that you’re clear and aligned to your vision and what’s important for both you and your business.

Take your goals for 2023 and decide:

• What needs to be done this quarter to be on track?

• Think 80/20: what’s the few that’s going to create the most results

• Get specific on the outcomes

• How is success measured? Is there a metric?

Remember this: not everything needs to be a “Quarterly Objective”

Your quarterly objectives are just the key things that will lead to accomplishing your yearly goals.

This doesn’t mean your team needs to be put everything else on hold. Other projects can happen in the background.

But the quarterly objectives are the highest priorities that your team is committed to.

Take your quarterly objectives and systematize them.

You can use frameworks like Rocks or OKRs.

The key things that need to be clear for each objective are:

• Clearly defined outcome

• Clear metric on how success is measured

• Clear owner who’s responsible for getting this objective to the finish line

• Clear timeline

Don’t worry about the nuances of HOW right now.

That’s the objective owner’s responsibility to come up with the HOW and who all is required to get this completed.

Once your quarterly objectives are clear and your leadership team is committed, move your objectives into your Business OS to track progress.

Communicate the game plan to your team and rally up excitement and commitment.

Leveraging ChatGPT

Want to make sure your quarterly objectives are set up clearly and effectively?

Set ChatGPT up as an expert business consultant and have it review them.

I wrote a guide on how you can better leverage ChatGPT in your business here.

Pro Tip: Prompt ChatGPT to be a business consultant specializing in whichever methodology you’re using for your business strategy:

• Business consultant specializing in the Scaling Up methodology

• Business consultant specializing in the EOS methodology

• Business consultant specializing in the Mochary Method

Feed it your 2023 goals and your current metrics and current issues.

Then have it review your quarterly plan and suggest ways you make it more effective.

While ChatGPT won’t replace awesome business consultants like me, it can do a pretty bang on job of assisting you with strategy and quarterly planning.

Thanks for reading, I hope you found it helpful!

Your Pal,

Colin

P.S. Whenever you’re ready…

1. I created some tools and resources here to help you take your business to the next level

2. Want to dive deeper on how to become a time freedom Founder? I’m launching the 20 Hour Founders Course soon, get on the waitlist.

3. Follow me on LinkedIn and Instagram (or Threads) for more tips on business and mindset growth