Conducting a business strategy meeting is a great way to improve performance within your corporate organization and vital for future success. As the perfect opportunity to facilitate discussion, identify company goals and assess relevant data, the key to a successful business strategy meeting is extensive planning. Allow us to give you some guidance…
The benefits of conducting a business strategy meeting
The primary purpose of business strategy meetings is to connect three key areas:
Ensuring the meeting is centred around these three areas allows everyone in the company to work towards a common goal, as well as helping manage and reduce potential business risks. By engaging with staff and communicating what needs to be done, financial needs can be prioritised, resources can be aligned for optimal results and, most importantly, necessary processes that will contribute to business growth can be agreed on. Other notable benefits of carrying out a business strategy meeting include:
Helping departments work collaboratively
Effective collaboration in the workplace is of utmost importance as not only does it improve productivity, but it also promotes healthy employee relationships. Bringing people together from various departments to work towards a shared goal creates a competent and experienced talent pool where people can thrive off each other’s knowledge and skills. If you want your business to encourage a culture of continuous learning, then collaboration is key to achieving this. When team members collaborate, it gives them the opportunity to grow beyond their comfort zone and ultimately take the business to new heights.
Improving transparency and accountability
Business strategy meetings are an excellent way to keep leadership informed of what is going on at every level in the organisation. If any issues within the business are made apparent during the meeting, it is easy to mitigate those problems and find an effective solution.
Facilitating the identification and subsequent adoption of opportunities for improvement
In order to be successful within your industry, you have to compete with others and work your way to the top. This means there is always something extra that can be done that will help you outperform your competitors and grow your business. A business strategy meeting is the perfect place to identify what this may be and ways in which it can be implemented.
Meeting preparation
Whether you intend to have a strategy meeting once a month, or once a quarter, or once a year, planning is essential. As long-term strategic progress is the goal, you will firstly need to ensure the right people are adequately prepared for the meeting. If no one is prepared to participate in a discussion of potential ways your business can be improved, your meeting will be a waste of time. Here is what you should do in the lead up to the meeting to guarantee results:
10-15 days before the meeting
It is important to give everyone enough time to adequately prepare for the meeting, so you must inform all attendees of the meeting time, date and location roughly two weeks beforehand. You can find out when the best time to conduct an important business meeting here. Once you have all your meeting details, a good idea would be to draft an email for leadership to send to the necessary people in their departments. Making attendance mandatory is also worthwhile as a strategy meeting without the right people in the room will not be worthwhile.
6-9 days before the meeting
The meeting will consist of a lot of data analysis from various departments, so you must gather this and clearly outline to everyone what it is they need to bring with them. Many individuals will have their own way of storing and monitoring their data. For example, someone might use powerpoint, while another person may use excel. Attempting to collate information from a variety of sources will waste time, so creating a template that works for everyone across the company is a must. Make sure you send this template to all attendees and ask to have it completed and returned to you before the day of the meeting. This will give you the chance to analyse the information and think of ideas you can put forward in the meeting.
3 days before the meeting
A few days before the meeting, you should try and pre-present the information you have gathered from all departments to leadership. By making the executives in the business aware of what the meeting will cover, everyone will get an idea of how much they need to contribute, and they can effectively prepare themselves and others in their department.
2 days before the meeting
Now you have understood what the key areas for discussion will be in the meeting, you may find that inviting additional people with particular expertise may be useful. For example, if you notice that there are financial complications which need to be addressed in the meeting, instead of inviting just the head of finance, you may want to invite several other people from the department. Informing them a few days prior will still give them enough time to prepare, and their input may be just what your business needs.
1 day before the meeting
The day before the meeting is crucial as everyone needs to be on the same page. To do this, you should send out all the information in advance and make everyone aware of what topics will be fuelling the meeting. The day before the meeting is also the perfect opportunity for anyone who has questions to get clarification, so there is no time wasted on the day.
What to do on the day
After all the preparation in the lead up to the meeting, you will be relieved when the day finally comes. On the day of the meeting, you will, of course, want to make sure the meeting room itself is prepared. The space should be the right size for the number of attendees and accommodate for any resources you may need, such as a projector or white board. If your meeting is going to consist of a presentation or a lot of visual data which you need everyone to see with ease, why not consider a LED based display in Milton Keynes? It might also be a good idea to provide light refreshments or lunch, depending on the time of the meeting.
Making your meeting a success
Planning a business strategy meeting requires a lot of time and effort, but the end result is definitely worthwhile. Regular strategy meetings will help you refine the processes within your business and ensure you are constantly improving and growing. If you require any more help for your corporate meeting, we have a number of services that we can cater to meet your business needs. From event staging services in Birmingham to event production in Milton Keynes, we can help make your meeting a success.