EntreLeadership - This is How You Create a Strategic Plan with Herb Jenkins

Episode Date: April 12, 2021

If you’re fine with coasting, dreaming small, or sticking to the status quo—this episode is not for you. But if you want more for your business, buckle up! You need a strategic plan, and we’re going to show you how to make one. In this episode, the senior executive vice president of RamseyTrusted, Herb Jenkins, will teach you step by step how to reach any aggressive goal through strategic planning. From prep to execution, you’ll learn how to run a successful off-site strategic planning session that will result in clear, actionable tasks and move you toward your business goals.   entreleadership.com/podcast Ramsey Solutions' website Learn more about EntreLeadership Executive Coaching The 6 Drivers of Business To get Herb's notes on The Stages of The Strategic Planning Process, text STRATEGICPLAN to 33444 EntreLeadership Partners Schedule a call with Tim, the Producer   Want expert help with your business question? Call 844-944-1070 and leave a message or send an email to [e-mail]. You could be featured on a future podcast episode! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey, what image comes to mind when you hear the phrase strategic planning? Now, if you're like a lot of entrepreneurs, if you're like me, it sounds kind of stuffy and academic. And many of us have been to that offsite. There was a total waste of time or maybe we had a great conversation, but there was no follow-through. And hey, if you're like me, you're all about action and results. If that's been your experience, you might cringe when you hear the phrase strategic planning. But here's the thing. If you don't have a game plan to achieve your vision, it's just not going to happen.

From the Ramsey Network, this is the Entry Leadership Podcast, where we help business leaders grow themselves, their teams, and their profits. I'm your host, Daniel Tarty, and my guest today is Herb Jenkins. Herb is one of our senior executive vice presidents here at Ramsey Solutions, and he's been leading strategic planning sessions for years. He's been my partner in crime. We kind of geek out on this stuff, and it's been awesome to experience the transformation of Ramsey going from a shoot from the hip, ready fire aim, charge the hill, build the airplane as you're flying it, to have very sophisticated, not stuffy, but effective, top-down, bottom-up, strategy-driven organization. It's caused us to scale. In fact, we've increased exponentially as a result of

Herb's work and having, oh, having a plan. And if you think, why should I spend all this time planning when I could be out there doing things, you're not alone? Herb used to feel exactly the same way. When I first got started in business, I hated it. I didn't want to do strategic planning. Why spend all this time planning when I can be doing, right? And I had one of those moments over a decade ago where I experienced it the way it was supposed to be.

And I realized it wasn't that mountaintop experience that. that naval gazing that Dave likes to say where you're just off kind of contemplating the universe. But I think it starts with most people don't know what it feels like when you do it right. Most people don't know what it'll do for their business when you do it right. What was that 10 years ago? Like what was that experience for you? You know, I had done some strategic planning before then or done some planning sessions before then. and they were honestly they they felt like the kind of experience where we were doing business we

were doing business okay let's stop let's have this conversation that feels like it doesn't relate to anything else we're doing and then we go back to business as usual and it felt like a waste of a day you know and we were just so busy you know trying to keep the lights on like just trying to make payroll that stopping and taken a day to waste time on a discussion that we're not going to use, just felt ridiculous. It's funny how we, like, that's pretty common where we feel like we're supposed to be taken a day to do an offsite, so we do it.

But then we don't do anything with what we talked about, and so we don't really respect it. But there's kind of this tension of, yeah, but we're supposed to do it. It's almost like we check the box, but then nothing happens. And so it gets a bad rap. Yeah. And if you actually do it that way, I would just say, say, stop doing it. That's not how it's supposed to be done. When I, when I experience strategic planning done right, here's what it felt like. I realized in that moment that we were spending, you know, when you do strategic planning the right way, it's maybe five days a year,

six days a year that you spend either an annual planning or quarterly planning. And I realized that done right, those Five days can literally impact decisions that are made every other business day of the year. Right. It's about 250 business days in a year. And if we can spend five days, which is 2% of that, and have conversations that impact the other 245, that was like, oh. Yeah. You know?

And if it's just this, we're going to go off and talk about something and then get back to business. as usual, it's not that. It's just, it's just a, it's just a waste. It's disconnected. But when you have the right kind of planning time where you decide where you want to go, how you're going to get there, and then you actually bring it back into your business and it impacts your daily decisions, that can change everything. Right. So when I experienced that moment, it just changes my whole perspective on it. And I just, from there, that's when I really started to deep dive and say, okay, I've got to figure this thing out. I've got to get this right. Really, resonates with my first experience of when I had that light bulb moment around strategic planning. I was similar. It felt very academic. I didn't understand the benefit of the off-site thing because I had been to similar experiences where it just felt like a waste of time. But then we worked with a professional who did exactly what you're talking about, where he helped us make some really big important decisions that effectively, it's almost like those big decisions automatically made a thousand other decisions and freed up all this time in the trenches that,

later that year we're executing as an extension of big decisions we made as a team versus just one ankle bite or putting out one fire at a time. Many business owners say I feel like a firefighter. I'm just always putting out fires. And that first year after we did it, the way that was like the right way, we suddenly had a whole lot less fires to put out. It felt like we were in charge again. It felt like we were proactively happening to the business. And it can really, I mean, it can really change the entire trajectory of not just how the team feels, but your traction and success and your organization. That's right. That's right. And I think you're spot on. It really is the difference between you happening to your business or your business happening to you. If you show up at work and your time

is spent just chasing the fires of the day that are, you know, blaring in your ear loud, the business is just happening to you. But if you can get above your business and figure out where you want it to go and be intentional and focused about taking your team there, you're happening to your business. And that's what we all want to be doing, right? So when I've really connected those dots,

that if that's what it takes to get our business to a place who wouldn't be otherwise, I was all in. You know, I went from being a detractor to be in an advocate, to be in a, I read every book I could. You know, I went, I went into the deep waters of strategic planning and have been doing it ever since. And here at Ramsey, we, you know, been doing it a ton, lots of different sessions, lots of different businesses. I would argue that you are genuinely at the master stage of this thing. You've done it so much, you've put in the reps, you've been in the room at Ramsey and other places where you really can see the value and you've

sold it internally at Ramsey, people that were more the late adopters in our leadership team around strategic planning. Because you got to realize, like, early on, we were just getting stuff done. We're shooting things and killing them and dragging them home. And it was just, you know, we covered a multitude of sins in business by just selling more and moving faster. And we would run harder. And to some extent that worked. And we didn't realize how inefficient we were operating. And you really were a big change agent and helping a lot of our leadership team, including myself and Dave, kind of wake up to what was possible if we started to work smarter and not that we were going to work less hard, but that we were working really hard now in

the right direction. And I'm curious when you're talking to business leaders, how do you sell them on the value of doing this the right way? What's really in it for them? Yeah, it's a great question. You know, the thing is, if you've got a great team, if you've got a great product, a great brand, great marketing, your business can be very successful without strategic planning. You know, it is not one of those things that you have to do to be viable or to be a good business. And for a long time, we had a great brand, great product, great team, and we were still, by a lot of measures, very successful. But, you know, when it comes to selling it, really, when I talk to business owners, I just say, what do you want your business to be that it's not today? Right.

What do you want your business to become that's not just going to happen on its own? Almost everybody I've spoken to has some form of answer to that question. and if your business is happening to you, it's almost impossible to create an environment where your business can grow to a place that doesn't just happen. Right. Actually, it, there's a, your team and you are able to take the business to a place that wouldn't go otherwise to a place where your competitors can't go. you know, to a place that you may not even have thought was possible.

When you start thinking about your business in those terms, you start realizing, like, that's why you have to get above the business. You know, so I really just talk to business owners in their terms. What do you want for your business? What do you want for you? And what's in the way of you getting there? And in that discussion, it almost always comes out, right? And usually the solutions to those kind of problems don't just solve themselves.

They don't just get solved in the trenches. They get solved by a group of people that are very careful and very intentional about solving that problem so that we can advance the business the right way. Yeah. I think it's a really great question to ask somebody, anybody in business, what do you want? What do you want your business to be? And there's different versions of this question. What's your five-year plan? What's your B-Hag? What's your goal?

at your target. Every time I ask a business leader of that, and it was the same experience when somebody asked me this the first time, there's kind of a vague sense. Like I think in five years, if we could be at this many customers, the team is maybe this size. It's kind of a hem ha. I know some things I want, but it's more of a vague description. And then the other thing that often is the case is the team, especially the core leadership team, is often aware of that vague sense, but they're not crystal clear. And so it's hard for them to be completely bought in where they can then go execute and drive, you know, with full confidence, we're all going the right direction. And the beautiful thing about an offsite where you get everybody together to have these conversations, again,

assuming done the right way, is you walk out with clarity on a five-year plan or 10-year plan, whatever the timeline is, and it's not a vague sense. It's very clear. And because you and your leadership team worked on that together, the buy-in is there, the support's there, and you guys lock arms coming out of that, and you're ready to go conquer the world at that point. And you just, it's like you shift gears up, like two or three gears coming out of a really good off-site. That's right. That's right. And when I'm talking to business owners that aren't doing much strategic planning, usually you do get the vague answer, but still, it's something to work with. Like, let's say they're a $5 million top line business, and they say something, you know,

they give the vague answer of like, man, I don't know. It'd be great if I could get to $20 million. Whatever the answer is, as long as it's not just there for the taking, it's not just, we'll just keep doing what we're doing, and that'll just happen. As long as it's aggressive, it's big, it's something that they're not quite sure how we go from here to there. that's all you need as a starting point. Now, if you don't have that kind of goal for your business, even a vague one, even if you're just like, yeah, I just kind of want to ride this thing out, which honestly, I've never talked to a small business owner who said that. But if you were

that kind of person, you wouldn't really need to do much strategic plan. Yeah, if you're completely content, what's the point, right? Yeah. What's that like? Not the people who listen to this podcast. They're hungry, they're excited. And obviously, all that goes back to your purpose. I mean, if you care about making an impact and helping people and you're not just trying to pay your household bills. You get to a certain watermark on your income, and you go, okay, my bills are paid, now what? And most business owners that we work with, they realize, yeah, that's fun, but we've got some goals that are bigger personally, and we've got a difference we want to make for our team

and for our customers. So the premise is good that we call that out, though, that you've got to be hungry for more in order for there to be any value in planning. That's right. That's right. So let's say you're the $5 million business that wants to go to $20, but that's kind of, kind of in three years, kind of $20 million, but you kind of know it, your team doesn't know it. The only way you can pull off a goal like that is for you to be as a leader, as an owner,

very clear on what you want for the business and for you and your team to be highly aligned on what that goal is, where we're going, while we're going there. because a goal that big needs to be, I mean, if it's that kind of goal, then we're not just going to kind of focus on it. We as a team have to get laser focused and attack that goal if we have a fighting chance of pulling it off. And when you get a team with that kind of dynamic, with that kind of goal, it's amazing what teams like that can do.

You know, but it's not, you're not talking about sure things here. A fighting chance, I'll take that any day. That kind of mindset, that kind of like, I'm not quite sure how we could pull that off, but I think we can. Man, that's a team that's oriented like that, they can achieve some amazing things. Talk to that leader listening right now, who I think is pretty typical, very driven personally and dreaming big, $20 million vision or whatever the case is, that's something you would call a stretch that's very aggressive. But their team isn't maybe at that level or maybe they're not that ambitious. I've talked to thousands of business owners through the years where you hear something like this. I love my team.

They're really great, but I just feel like I'm on this other level in terms of how much push and how much drive I'm really ready for us to go out and make this thing happen at a really big, aggressive kind of scale. And it's almost like they're trying to get that infused into the mindset of their team or help them see what they see. You almost get this like, if they could just see what I see, they would be as excited and motivated as I am. How does the planning work or the offsite help solve for that type of a team or scenario? Yeah, that's a great question.

And a lot of leaders, a lot of owners struggle with this. Sometimes they struggle with even sharing a number like that. $20 million business, does that just mean, is my team just going to hear that and think I'm getting rich while they keep the same income. You know, there's almost like this, this guilt factor that comes into that. But one thing I know to be true, one thing you know to be true is everybody who's on a team wants to be part of something that's bigger than themselves, right? For almost every business out there that I talk to, there is a why behind their what that matters. And usually you can connect the dots to say something like, this is why we're in business. This is why we do what we do.

Now imagine if we were a business of that size, if we go from $5 million to $20 million, do you know how much more we can do, how much more impact we can have, how much more people we can help, how much more team members we can hire? You know, if you talk about the why behind the what on the goal, if you get people to connect with the purpose and the mission, not just the goal that we're shooting for, but the why behind that goal and why it matters, I have seen teams light up with that. Then you can rally them to say,

but I need each of you to do your part. I can't do this by myself. We can't do this alone. It's only us coming together that's going to be able to pull off a goal like that. So that's definitely something that from a vision casting standpoint, from a rallying the team standpoint,

you can absolutely do, but only when you're clear on where you want to go. So let's talk about these outcomes. I've written down a few things as you've been talking coming out of this offsite that's done really well. And of course, strategic planning is not just an offsite, but I think we should talk about how to do a good one and then what the process is beyond that. But if you can get clarity and buy-in and passion from your team, you're kind of off to the races. If that's the chocolate chip cookie that we're trying to create, what's the recipe? How do we reverse engineer? clarity and passion and buy-in. And with that leader listening right now going, yeah, I think we need to do an off-site. I think we need to meet with the team and start having these conversations.

What's the work they need to do before they even call the meeting? That's a great question. You know, for most people that I talk to who kind of understand, yeah, I should be doing strategic planning and I want to be doing that kind of vision casting, but they're not.

One of the biggest blockers is, I don't know how. And I think that is a great question to ask, because there is a very clear, very step-by-step how that you and I can impact from the trenches on how we've done it here at Ramsey that can really translate one-to-one in their business. And really, okay, so if I want to do it, but I want to do it the right way, there's really just three basic parts to it. Let's see you're going to do it all day, whether it's off-site or whatever. There's the time you spend before the session. there's the time you spend in the session, and there's the time you spend after.

And if we can break it down in those three parts, I think we can give some really crystal clear direction on how to do a planning session the right way. So before, during after, let's break that down. The other thing I want to throw in here, this is just, this is my personal opinion. I know we're in a world where so many things are getting more virtual and Zoom and streaming meetings and virtual remote workforces. It's very vogue right now, especially because of the pandemic. And that's okay.

That's not necessarily good or bad. We believe at Ramsey, and let's get everybody under the same roof and in-person meetings and, you know, all that. What we have figured out, though, is that even if you're going to have a virtual company, the piece that you cannot do effectively virtually is exactly this meeting we're talking about. Strategic planning requires a in-person spirit and culture. of collaboration in the room, a full day. Like, you just can't pull this off very well over a Zoom call where everybody's kind of half on the camera and half checking their emails and their kids are running around in the background. So I think it's just a significant call out to say this is

one of those things, even if you're going virtual, you need to hang on to fly everybody in, get an Airbnb where you can go meet up or whatever that looks like. And I think it's just, it's critical that everybody's in the same room at the same time for this type of session. Absolutely agree. 100% agree. The reality is, you know, if you and your team are going to be meeting and solving a difficult problem together, that is relational time. I mean, it's business time, but it's relational time. And it's just not the same when you're not together in the same space. We, I mean, the interactions that we have, even just the nonverbal cues that we give each other, you just don't read the same when it's virtual.

I strongly agree with that. I love doing off-sides out of the office. There's something about getting in a different space, on a different thinking wavelength that just does create a great environment on team. It doesn't have to happen that way. But I am a big proponent of that and absolutely in-person 100%. Yeah, because it's done well. There's a lot of conflict. There's arguing.

There's wrestling. And it's key, the relational piece of that that everybody kind of feels like they're in it together in a very physical sense in the same. room because we're battling each other towards the best outcomes. So let's break down these stages before doing and after. What should a leader be doing to get ready to have a fantastic offsite that's going to get these results? Great question. One of the first things I would say that they have to make as a leader as a decision is do I want to lead this session or not? This is a basic one. This isn't really the planning to meet of the session, but there are such thing as facilitators who can come in, like you said earlier,

and facilitate a session for you. And as a leader, then you get to be a participant along with the rest of your team. Or you can lead it. I've done both. You know, both work just fine. And I think we can talk today assuming, let's imagine if they did lead it. But also, even if you're not, you can still, what we're talking about here is still relevant because it can still be what you expect of your facilitator as they come in.

What are some of the pros and cons? You know, when it comes to, when it comes to, especially if you're new to it, when it comes to your leadership team coming together and working through difficult problems like this, if you're facilitating a session, if you're leading the discussion, you're having to spend a lot of calories,

a lot of brain power, making sure that we achieve the outcomes of the day. If you have a facilitator who's, leading that discussion and you're just a participant, you can focus on the team members in the room, you can focus on the problems that we're trying to solve. It's just less brain power that you're having to spend. I personally prefer to have a facilitator lead sessions for my businesses. But again, there's plenty of times where I've done it myself. I've done, I mean, dozens and dozens and dozens of sessions and love the practice. It's just, it is, it is a,

You know, it is something that you've really got to be on your game for to be able to pull off the right way. So definitely something to look into. You know, our executive coaches also do a great job of talking through options like that and helping business owners steer in the right direction. You also got to think about, you know, kind of your own objectivity. Like I have found, I've facilitated hundreds of these in our organization. And when I've done them for entree leadership, which is my baby, it's the thing I built. It's my personal leadership team. Then I'm also. in the weekly in the trenches making this stuff happen. I have such a harder time staying neutral and objective as the facilitator when it's a strategy session for the entree leadership team because I'm so in it and it's almost like I can't help but just jumping to the end and casting the vision that I've been thinking about and using this as just another way to kind of tell the team this is what we're doing. And done right, the leader needs to sit there as a peer with their team and And really, you don't give up your trump card. It's not like you're handed the keys over and they're just going to run roughshod over the business.

But in the room, you really need to be a co-contributor to create that buy-in that we're talking about. And as leaders, we can really tilt the room. And especially for the person at the whiteboard with the marker, that can shift the dynamic a lot. And so I have found I actually like the facilitator from another area to come in when it's about entree leadership because I'm so emotionally invested in that area. Whereas with our operating board, I facilitate those a lot. And Dave's the CEO, and he sits at the table, and he would be tilting the room a lot if he was the guy with the marker. And so that dynamic works well. So it's something to think through, like, how much are you going to move the room away from objectivity and openness just because of your role with that team in the day to day?

That's right. You've got to think of a facilitator as a hat that you're wearing. I mean, business owner is another hat that you're wearing. but when you are opening, you know, a discussion or you're trying to draw out team members, you've got to just recognize. I'm wearing that facilitator hat. I'm trying to keep this conversation going. I'm not trying to just give them the answer and, you know, hard stop the conversation.

So 100%. It is very manageable to do. You've just got to give the team a lot of room to be bouncing ideas around and talking with you, you're not dominating the conversation and just telling them what to do. Okay, so first decision to make is who's going to facilitate this. Let's assume the business owner says, I don't know an outside facilitator. We don't have the funds for that right now. I'm going to take a shot of this thing.

Now what? Great question. You know, I love this question. So now what? You're like, you're staring off into the unknown. You know, what do I talk about? What do we use this time for? It's just one big question mark.

you know, it's, it's really not that hard. We have a day. We're going to spend a day talking about the business. I always start with what outcomes do I want out of that day. It's really simple. Imagine we're at the end of that day. And I'm looking back. What have we answered?

What have we defined? What decisions have we made? You know, for the decisions, that we've made, where has it made my business easier? You know, I just think, what do I want out of this session? You don't have to start from scratch every time and, you know, dream up something. But for where your business is right now, you know, let's say you are, it's early in the year, and you're like, you know, I keep hearing that I should have an annual goal.

I should have some sort of desired future, and we don't have one. then outcome is define your desired future. I'd love to have an on paper, on purpose, annual goal for my business. That's something you can work from, right? It's not the thousand different options. It's just here and now in my business where I'm at, what all went out of this time? Yeah, that's good. You know, that's ultimately like the offsides that I've been a part of that go really well,

everyone, the leader especially, but everyone has a clear sense of by the end of today, these are the outcomes that we're going for. It's kind of your compass that helps you stay on track through the day. As I've done prep with leaders and they can't quickly top of mind answer that question, I found it helpful to kind of get them to think about what problems you want to solve. Like where do you feel pain right now? What are you frustrated about? We have a lack of priorities or it just feels like chaos. Tell me more about chaos. And you know, you may not initially know the outcomes, but if you can marinate in your pain a little bit, right? That's what we all love to do. What's driving you crazy all the time? And then if you could eliminate the thing that's driving

you crazy in the form of, well, if we could hire this key person or define what success looks like for this initiative or, you know, you can kind of work backwards from wherever you're frustrated because typically under the hood of that frustration is the outcome that you could kind of be solving for in that particular day. That's right. I agree. If nothing comes to mind on the outcomes. I mean, that example of it's early in the year and we don't have a desired future, it's a felt pain right now in my business. I feel like I'm in the year and I don't know where this, where I want this year to end. Usually felt pain is, I mean, it's always there for every business owner and just spending, I don't know, 30 minutes to an hour, just journaling, writing some of

those options down. It becomes pretty clear, pretty quick. You and I've done a lot of prep for a lot of planning sessions. And the topic seems to rise to the top almost every time in 30, 45 minutes with a lot of clarity. Well, another thing that we've used, and especially as we've rolled out the six drivers for entree leadership, this has been our framework that's been active and, you know, really out in the marketplace for a couple of years now. But if you're just kind of trying to think, okay, where do we want to focus? And just to recap on the six drivers, it's your personal leadership, it's your purpose for your organization, it's people and people issues, it's your overall operating plan, your product or service, and your profit. And so you go, okay, there's six

areas that somewhere in one of those areas we're probably experiencing more pain or frustration. So does today need to be about our leadership, like how we're working as a leadership team? Or, no, today's really about our product. We've got an issue with the way that the service is being provided to our customers, and we're just going to swarm that thing today. it's really difficult to cover the whole business and all six drivers in a single offsite. And that's why we're going to recommend that you do it ongoing and not just one time a year. But I have found, especially as we've had the six drivers as our framework, if I'm feeling a little bit stuck coming into an offsite, really asking the leader ahead of time or the leadership team, where in one of these areas do we really want to kind of hone in on in that particular day? I love that.

You know, as we've been developing the six drivers here internally, one way that I've been using them is, let's say for our business, we have our desired futures for the year. We have our annual goals. It's kind of a given that we will spend some time in, let's say it's a Q2 quarterly session. We'll spend some time saying what does our focus need to be this quarter to make sure we stay on track for our desired future? And that'll take some of the time. That's kind of like a home base. You know, every session, we have this annual cycle where we define our desired future and we have our quarterly rhythms where we manage to it.

But then that doesn't take the whole time. A great filter that I've used is, okay, let me go back through the six drivers. Let me just kind of size up the business and say, where do I have the biggest issues today? And that changes from season to season. That's right. And running through that filter, you know, if I think, think about people. I mean, there's almost always some stuff there, but whether it's people or product or profit, different seasons, if there's different issues, we'll make time in that same session to say,

okay, we're going to focus on the next quarter, and then we're going to make some space for talking through some profit margin problems that we've been experiencing this last season because competitors have been undercutting us and eating into our margin. So we're talking about getting ready. First step is to figure out what you want out of the day. What outcomes do you want? If you've got a list of here would be some outcomes. My list is always way longer than what we can actually get done in a day. But the process, you and I know, of getting buy-in from the team actually starts even before the off-site. So before you just jump into that room, what kinds of conversations are you doing to prep yourself and the team to be ready for a great day when you have your off-site?

That's a great question. And I'll say as a broader statement, most every planning session that I can think back on, was it was made in the time spent before the session. All the great ones were prepped the right way, not just for the person leading it, but for the team that's involved too. And I'd say it's good for us to camp for a minute on both of those aspects.

There's the prep that you need to do as a leader once you know the outcomes you want out of the session. And there's also the prep that you need to guide your team to do so that they can do their part in that session. as well. Because if you plan it all day and you've got it all figured out what you want out of it and you've got all the exercises in your head and your team has no idea. And they come into that session saying, okay, what are we here to talk about? And they hear it for the first time. They're not going to be able to contribute much because they don't have any context when they haven't been thinking about it.

And when you stop and think about that, that's pretty straightforward. But it's so easy to gloss over. I mean, I have done that session a few times, and it does not get good. It's painful. It's like, why haven't you guys been thinking about this like I have for the last month? It's just the next meeting for them. Yeah. They're just rolling in. I said you'd do this a few times in prepping a team for an offside that's coming up

where you have given specific assignments or homework, maybe something to read or maybe spend 30 minutes and write out your thoughts about a specific question. And it's really important that it's not just guys, we have an Ossite coming up, be thinking about it, to say more about how specific you need to get and actually giving people kind of a task on the front end and driving to that clarity. When whenever I go into a session, I'm going to keep using the annual goal because I think it's one that is one of those every year you're going to be doing it. It's one of the most important ones to do as a business owner. if you're coming into a session where you want to define your desired future for this year, take a step back and think, okay, for each member of my team, what do I want them really ready and willing to speak to and challenge?

Sometimes, you know, sometimes I just kind of let my mind wonder there. Like, it's not this prescriptive. If we're going to talk this topic, then it needs to be these questions. But, you know, for us who've been in this process for a few years, sometimes I'll just think, you know, I'd like to get some perspective on the team on last year's goal. What did you like about it? What did you not like about it? Just to get some perspective. As you look ahead, you know, a lot of times this is a question I'll ask ahead of time.

As you look ahead, what do you see as the most important focus of the year? You know, to be right, just give me some thoughts. I just want some ideas. Just be thinking about, you know, I try to make it really approachable. I like I take the pressure off by saying you don't have to be right. Right. Just come with some, you know, I mean, we talk a lot about like the green light session. You know, no idea is a bad idea until you hear that idea and you're like, well, except for that one.

But as a leader, you can't, I mean, you really have to, you have to react in a way where that's true. And the team feels safe to just think wide open and they're not going to be judged for it. absolutely you know it's really i i think at this point you're you're really making me think back on on those the homework that we've given to to our team and and and while we've done it i think it's really just trying to ask a few simple questions of each of our team members to be thinking about ahead of time that if they had good answers to these questions then i would feel like we're going to have a rich discussion you know there's there's going to be some good insights from them. I mean, the whole point of getting a team together to do this to begin with is,

I mean, you as an owner are going to have lots of great ideas, but if you surround yourself with a handful of sharp thinkers, it's going to be better. You know, so how can I equip them with just some simple bottom shelf questions that can get them to be bringing good ideas and challenge me? You know, I'm trying to invite it in because I see. you know, I can create something pretty good myself, but we can create something great. So how can I get we to be engaged like I'm engaged? It's really just simple stuff like that. So a few simple questions, a few homework questions, a few thoughts to get together,

nothing too extensive. I don't ask people to write papers or put together pro formas or anything crazy like that ahead of a planning session. It's just think. It's just gets some thoughts together. And like you said, maybe either listen to this. podcast, listen to this keynote talk, read this chapter of this book because it's relevant to the topic at hand. You know, desired future, annual goal. Lots of people have written lots of stuff

about that. Here's, you know, read this and just think about it. All right. So we're designing a day where the results are clarity, buy-in, higher levels of passion from the team. We start with preparing and thinking about the objectives or the outcomes we want from that day. Then we get team to buy into this, give them some homework, and now we're coming up on that day. Let's talk about the next stage. So first stage is preparation. There's power and preparation. You said every off-site that goes well, the value is in the prep. But then we get to the day of during that day. Talk us through that. I love the day of. Every single planning session that I've ever been a part of, the day always has this tension at the beginning of the day.

before we get into it. Everybody's getting into the room. They're getting seated. There's almost just like this unspoken, just tension under the surface. And I love that. It's not something you should let hang around, but it's just one of those kind of days. I mean, how often in the rhythm of business,

you just don't experience that. But you should know it's coming. I always recommend in any session that you're doing, start it with an icebreaker. started with something that diffuses that tension that gets people to engage. It might be just a silly, just kind of warm up question. But there's something about this, like the team comes to the table with like, man, we're going to have a big conversation about a big topic.

And, you know, we're at this off-site location. All this experience is new. And they kind of bring it into the room and it's just kind of hanging around the table and spoken. Just a lightweight, simple. conversation starter to get the group engaged goes a long way. Yeah. So you're just trying to drive interaction and kind of prime the pump a little bit. Just break the ice.

What's an example of something like that that's not, I think some people, at least I do, when I hear icebreaker, I think cheesy or campy, like something, a trust fall, like, what type of icebreaker are you talking about? I don't know if all of ours are cheesy or not, but I love, I like ones that are more that don't have to do with the business. It's just something funny or fun to talk about. Okay. So one question we had is just an opener was,

what's the next thing on your bucket list that you want to knock out? It has nothing to do with the session. It is not meant to have anything. That has nothing to do with defining our desired future for the year. But honestly, it gives you a chance to just get to know people better, too. I mean, some of the answers I heard from my team are like, wow. that's really cool. You know, we've had questions from everything like, what's your favorite ice cream flavor?

I'm a big ice cream fan, personal interest, you know, just a simple, simple stuff that's just life. It sounds like you're kind of saying you really want to get people first to interact as humans, not business people. That's right. Like get them to relate and kind of engage on a person-to-person basis instead of plodeled. and in the big agenda. Yeah. One time we had one that was, whether at Ramsey or before, what was your most embarrassing moment at work?

And that question got a visceral reaction from the people sitting on the table like, oh, man, I don't know if I want to relive that, but, I mean, that's vulnerability. You know, that's opening up and sharing something. And I imagine you get some laughter into the room and some storytelling. And some secondhand embarrassment. Everybody relaxes a little bit after that. Okay. So you break the ice. Yep.

And then from there, how do you kind of frame up the day from that point? Really straightforward. I like to kick off the day, just walking through the agenda, which ideally the team has already heard some form of and the questions that you're asking ahead of time. But just to, hey, here's what we want to talk about today. Today in an ideal world, if we do this well, we will walk out of this room with a landed, desired future for the year. So first we're going to talk about our annual goal. Then we're going to talk about the key objectives that we need to achieve. And if we can knock those things out, then we'll talk about what we need to focus on this quarter. Three-part agenda.

Ideally, if we knock all that stuff out, this will be a huge win for the day. Just kind of setting the expectation for the team, just kind of run through it. If you use flip charts, it's an easy thing just to kind of put up on a list and just have there for people's reference. But just something to say, like here's, I mean, just to confirm, here's what the day's all about. I love the flip chart or the whiteboard. I know you do. Omnipresent. Well, it's because I don't know how to use computers.

But I can draw with crayons because we learned how to do that in the third grade. No, what I love about having it up the whole time and in the room is at some point during the day, it's just inevitable. Like, you're going to get off track or you're going to start spending too much time chasing a rabbit and to appropriately be able to kind of point physically back to, all right, guys, hey, look, you remember our job? Let's put this in the parking lot because we need to, and the team can kind of see from the thing we started the day with of, oh, this is why, again, it's those outcomes. This is why we're here. And you and I both have been in those off-sites where you didn't have the agenda and you didn't have the list of outcomes.

And part of why you spend a whole day talking about stuff and you never go do it is you start getting into these rabbit-chasing exercises and you never actually work on the business. You end up just chasing tactical issues. And it's like that wasn't really a strategy session. That was just a venting session. That's right. It is very powerful. I've never met a group so disciplined that they stayed on point for a day.

And I've been with some discipline teams. Having that agenda, having those outcomes are great anchor points to reference back to, to say, I love that discussion. You know what? We should keep talking about that. Let me create a parking lot. That's a magic word that you'll learn as you'll learn. you do more planning sessions. Let me put that in the parking lot. And it's just something that you can

list on a flip chart over to the side as issues like that come up. And if we have time at the end, we'll cover them. And if not, it didn't distract us from the conversation at hand. Yeah. It's good to have that anchor. Okay. So you tell everybody, this is where we're going today. Here's the agenda. And then I've always found this is the hardest shift for the facilitator to kind of get everybody into, like, what's the first exercise? How do you get everybody to start talking and saying smart things that are actually solving the problem? So how do you make that transition? It's really not hard, but you're right. The whole conversation, if you get it right, the conversation gets so easy. And if you just flub the opener, it's something the team has to kind

of work past over the next 10 to 15 minutes. I think a great exercise. So first topic of the day, to talk about our desired future for the year. I love starting each exercise with a combination of, I mean, if we've asked the team to read a chapter in something, then just like a quick recap of the teaching, right? Just think like we're just trying to get people in the same thinking wavelength here in the room. Right. So, so quick teaching on here's what a desired future is. All it really is is the next milestone, right? I mean, as a business, we have much bigger goals. We have much bigger dreams.

All we're trying to figure out is what's our milestone for this year. You know, and just teach on it. Teach on it just maybe two minutes on just kind of reinforcing those core concepts and core teachings. Sometimes I like to weave in a story and just story tell a little bit. But it's just it's the teaching paired with a story that often gets things to resonate with people. You don't have to do that. But I think it's a great tactic. But it's really just that teaching, storytelling is more your opener.

And if you can follow it with what we sometimes call an anchoring question, that can really open the exercise the right way. I want to help our audience a little bit, too, the ones who maybe don't feel like they are professional communicators. You know, because they go, I'm not Daniel Tarty or Herb or Dave Ramsey. You guys are just, that's what y'all do. how am I going to teach my team something? It really doesn't have to be a super fancy presentation. In fact, there's times I've just read from a blog post or I've played a 10 minute YouTube video. We were doing a thing that Jim Collins, his flywheel framework, and I just opened the session by playing a 10 minute video of Jim Collins talking about the flywheel. And then I had that anchoring question after that. So you don't even have to personally, you know, be the guy, you know, I got a microphone and a spotlight on me. That's not what you're saying when you're talking about teaching. Yeah, I wasn't clear earlier. When I say teaching, I mean, teach somebody else's stuff.

You don't need to have original thought. This is not a new concept that you have, that's your brainchild. This is, this is what material can you draw from that somebody else has written that, I mean, you're not trying to write the next book on leadership. You're just trying to lead a session for your business. So whether it's drawing from that same keynote or podcast that you sent out or from the book that you're referenced, that's all you need to do. And just the tree tops of the stuff that you found most valuable out of it, again, it doesn't have to be original thought, and it probably shouldn't be. So what is a good anchoring question? What's the components of that? I find a lot of groups struggle.

Let's say it's the annual goal. we know we're here today to talk about an annual goal. That's the topic. But what's the question to answer? What's the question to answer that if we answer it, then it's almost inevitable that will land the topic. Right. So practically speaking,

for an annual goal type outcome, I might ask a question like, you know, here in this season of business, there's a lot we can focus on. There's a lot of different directions that we can go. And when we think about an annual goal around that milestone, our challenge is really to answer of all the things. What is the most important thing that we need to advance? That if we advance it, it opens doors to other things that wouldn't know. otherwise be there. What is the most important thing that we as a team need to make sure happens this year to set us up for success? That is a, I mean, it's similar, but that is a different

orientation on the same thing. And people can answer that. If you said, what is our annual goal for the year? They may not be able to give you that answer, but they can say what the most important focus is. In our season of business, I think we need to grow customers or I think we need to to improve our product or I think we need to overhaul some processes or whatever the issue is in the business. I mean, you ask a question like that, you're going to get, especially if you've done a little bit, asked them to do a little bit of homework, you're going to get people to start contributing answers. And from there, I'm not looking for right. I'm not looking for are you right or are you wrong. I'm just looking for people to just bring, like get some material on the surface.

right so I start usually just kind of whiteboarding the answers just kind of listing them as people talk about them and people I mean a group of five and most businesses will at least come up with about a dozen or so different options you might throw some out there I usually let the other people speak first and then as a leader I throw mine out there towards the end yeah how do you get that equal interaction because I have found after if I just verbally ask a anchoring question just open-ended to the room sometimes one of two really terrible things happens. Either everyone just kind of stares at me like deer in the headlights because no one wants to go first or the person who always talks starts talking and they don't

stop talking and they dominate the conversation. So how do you kind of get interaction from everybody, but also make sure the wallflowers speak up and the dominant personalities kind of chill out a little bit and everybody's contributing kind of equally? Well, most of our listeners are salespeople and they love the awkward tension. I think part of that just opening question and let it hang sometimes I just let it hang and I'm like, I will be here all day. We can just be quiet together. You know, early in the day, it's going to happen a little bit. You got to leave a little bit of room for it.

That's okay. But I'm always ready to, it really is good to be ready, willing, able to start asking specific questions to specific people. Yes. So give it maybe 10, 15 seconds. that people are just kind of hanging back and they're just kind of looking at the ceiling and not wanting to engage. You know, you can say, Daniel,

you know, you and I were talking about this the other day, and I thought you had some really good thoughts. I'd love to hear more on where you think we should focus this year. And when you ask that kind of question, it starts flowing really easily. That's good. Now, it really, I mean, there is the science of a planning session, but there is the art of it,

and the art is mostly the people stuff. Yeah. Drawing people out, them to engage the right way, making it, like a lot of times early on in a session, I'll do a lot of affirmative, positive reinforcement when I get an answer from somebody. Even if I think it's just an okay answer, it's, that's great. You're celebrating the behavior more than the content. And I'm really trying to tell the rest of the room, I liked what they did. I want you to do the same signal. That's right. Yeah, you really got to read the room. You got to make it fun. And you

have to bring the energy, but do it without talking the whole time. I've seen you do this too, and I love this technique. Sometimes you can ask a question, and instead of just having people verbally respond as the first step, you can say, I'm going to give you 60 seconds to write down an answer. And that kind of removes the tension of first to talk, and it gets everybody's mental juices flowing a little bit. And then it's easier when you say, okay, somebody read me what you wrote down, they're kind of, their brain is already kind of on that track. And everybody's written something down and so you can shift around the room and say, let's hear from everybody and you start populating the whiteboard and then you're kind of off to the races.

Yep. I love Post-it notes. If you don't have them in your office already, you absolutely should get them and use them in your planning sessions. Just a few post-it notes and some markers can go a long way. They really help with two things. They help, like you're saying, with, hey, take two or three minutes and just, kind of collect your thoughts. If you feel the room kind of stalling out and not having any any ideas, most people do think in on their own terms better than in front of a group. So give

them the room for that. A lot of times where that's really helpful too is where if I think it's going to be the kind of discussion where if I've got a high D strong personality on my team and I know they're going to lead with the answer and most people are just going to go along with it. getting people to get their thoughts on paper before we start the discussion is awesome for presenting group for preventing group think and that is i mean that is that has changed the trajectory of conversations in a great way just with a really simple technique so i'm you know i'm honestly not somebody who loves really big overdone facilitated exercises with with lots of of complex visuals that build on each other, but just simple, easy practices that can help a group

continue working through a tough issue. The more the better. Okay, so hopefully at this point, the juices are flowing. People are interacting. As a facilitator, you're starting to capture answers and kind of moving through just guiding the conversation through the day. How much of this do you have planned out and kind of perfectly oriented around the agenda or is it just kind of like you're just off to the races and whatever happens you're just running with it a lot of times as a facilitator we can often feel like we've got to have every minute of an eight hour day planned and it needs to go exactly to plan for this thing to work right it really doesn't work that way you know if you've got a loose agenda of three topics like we talked

about then really you really only need to plan about 30 minutes of that eight hour day you know you've got to get your your opener right like we talked about when you kick a an exercise. What are you going to teach on and what story are you going to tell? You've got to get your anchoring questions right. And really from there, you just got to leave a lot of room for discussion. And that discussion is just flow, right? You cannot, no matter what you do, architect a discussion like that. You've got to leave room for it to be a little bit messy. You've got to leave room for, you know, I'm going to let this conversation go a little bit and then I'll bring it back on track. I mean, I've never seen a day go exactly like I thought it would, and I've stopped trying to make that happen.

But, I mean, as the discussion progresses, as we form our desired future or as we form our objectives, you start checking off those boxes, right? You start landing stuff and you start making progress. You know, as each exercise comes to a close, we really just land on, is this our desired future? Yes, okay, great. Let's move on. Next exercise, open it with a quick teaching and a story, just like we did on the first one, and you just keep going, right? So in terms of actually making it through the day, that's given me a lot of relief. I don't need to have eight hours of stuff planned.

Yeah. I just need to have my openers and my closes planned and leave room for discussion between. Talk about the closes, because you've got 30 minutes of getting everything going and set up the right way, six hours of flow that you're still facilitating, but you're really wanting to make all that six hours of flow and conversation. move towards a landing zone. And that landing zone is, you ask the question, what outcomes do I want from the day? So how do we make sure we kind of get into that landing zone and then from there move those discussions

into the utility of driving our business forward? And this doesn't become one of those days we talked about earlier where we go, well, that was a waste of time or it all just went on the shelf and we went back to work and didn't do anything with it. I try to leave 30 minutes, sometimes up to an hour at the end of the day,

depending on how much we've covered, for action items, next steps, owners, due dates, right? I want at the end of that day to button up that discussion and have that team be ready and committed to put it into practice. So when we land our desired future, or when we land our objectives, or when we land our quarterly priorities, I don't necessarily in the moment land all the owners and all the, all the timeframes and all the next steps out in the moment, I usually kind of wait to the end and then really as a group button

all of that stuff up together. And that has been one of the, it's simple. This is easy stuff. But that simple thing has made it so easy to actually put it into practice walking out of that session. Because most of the next steps are probably a week, maybe two out

in terms of timeline, short-term stuff. Okay, so we're going to take this objective and we're going to communicate to the team. Or we're going to take this objective and wordsmith at some, and I want you to bring it back and give us an update. Those kind of things are one or two weeks out.

But if everybody walks out of there with crystal clear next steps based on the things that we've landed, then we can actually put this stuff into practice. And from there, it's just about making sure it gets done. I agree it's simple, but I want to talk about the significance of that last stage of making sure

that every objective has an owner. And we like to phrase it in the language of who's going to do what by when. And these objectives are big. And, you know, they're important things that are typically above and beyond somebody's day job. I like to think of them as bowling balls. And if you have seven objectives, each person should walk out with a bowling ball, not seven bowling balls for one person.

And if you as the facilitator, the leader, don't assign actions and owners in the conversation, you become the de facto babysitter of these seven bowling balls because I've done. done that. I've walked out and I'm like, wait, I thought everybody was just going to go do this stuff. And I didn't get to clarity. They went back to their jobs. Three weeks goes by. Nothing's happened. I assumed they just were going to pick up these naturally based on their areas of responsibility. It's really good to get that clarity written down and make sure everybody's kind of committed to, oh, yes, my name's on that. I'll make sure in two weeks we're going to check in and I'll have an update. That's right. It's deceptive because we are the group that's going to get this done. But we as a group do not.

get it all done together as one group activity. And there is a way I've seen it happen time and time again to have owners of individual objectives that are part of your desired future where we are still working together as a group to get it done, but we have a clear champion of each one to make sure it gets done the right way like we committed to it. And when you get that in place, stuff moves. It's really good. That's how you're doing off-site.

But again, the magic is the result. that it creates for your business as you go forward. So as we wrap up, you know, many business owners, they have weekly meetings with their direct reports. They're used to checking in. Oftentimes, though, they're just talking about the work of that week. How do we get these big objectives integrated into our weekly rhythm and get that traction and accountability to make sure we're marching towards it? If we're not going to have another offsite until a quarter from now, we want to make sure we're getting kind of systematic or incremental, rather, progress on those objectives. What does that look like? How do we make time for that when we're running everything

else in the day to day? I love it. It's a great question. I love, think about it like you have a countdown timer that has started walking out of that session that when it gets to zero, that session is pretty well forgotten. There is precious time. I like to communicate to the team as soon as I can after that session, while it's fresh, while it's front of mind, because every day that goes by, every week that goes by, it just gets a little bit colder. But if you can actually communicate it to the team, if you can actually get them to see, hey, this is where we want to go this year, this is what we think we need to do to pull that off. The team can rally around it. They can ask good questions. They can say, what's my part? You can actually, with the owners, say, okay,

and you're going to see this owner follow up with you on this objective, right? You're preparing the team. It's not just like, why is all this new conversation happening? Where's all this coming from. It's really preparing the team for, we've gotten clarity like we've never had before. Now, we can walk it out together. Here's where we're going. Here's while we're going there. Here's your part in it. Now let's go. So you've got to prepare ahead of time. You got to have a plan for the day of and then you've got to execute afterwards. And we know that if you do that, you really will see your business hit a whole new trajectory. I got to tell you, the first few times I did this, they were clumsy. I thought, how am I going to do this? And I saw somebody that did it professionally

for us and it was amazing. And my first one, I just felt like a doofist kind of fumbling through the day. And I have found that it really is reps, but don't overthink it. But as we wrap up, talk to that business owner who's just kind of going, oh, man, I don't know if I'm ready for this or I'm not sure I'm cut out for this. I just want you to sell our audience on, again, why it matters and just kind of the permission to go for it. That's great. I used to feel those same things, you know. I mean, there was a day when I was like, well, I love what they're doing, but I could never do that. Honestly, strategic planning in that regard is a lot like budgeting. We never teach. Your first budget needs to be perfect. And it just needs to be, you know, everything that it'll be like when you do it a year from now. First budget, just do it. You know, even if it's half right, you've made progress. Next budget, it's a little bit better. Next budget, hey, I've kind of got this thing figured out. Next budget, I know what I'm doing.

There's a ramp up to it. You know, it's a strategic planning is a skill. Facilitation is a skill just like anything else. And if it's the first time you're doing it, just give yourself permission to say, this first one's probably not going to go great. But, you know, I've got some basics here. I'll try that.

Let me just see how it goes. Sometimes you tell the team that too. Hey, I'm trying this for the first time. It may not go great. But I think it's important. Let's try it. Let's just see how it goes. Your team, just even seeing that vulnerability is great.

It's good stuff. Herb Jenkins, Ramsey board member, top leader here, Black Belt and Strategic Planning and friend of the Entry Leadership Tribe. Thanks so much. It's always an honor to have you on the Entry Leadership podcast. Thank you, Daniel. All right, folks, not the most sexy topic in business, strategic planning, but I got to tell you, from my own experience, it's one of the most critical.

I used to be that guy that thought, we don't have time for planning. We got too much work to do. And I had a lot of passion, a lot of energy, and we did get a lot of results up to a point. And then people came around me and showed me how to do exactly what Herb and I've been talking about today. And guys, it changed the game. Our results went from incremental to exponential. The team's clarity went from foggy to crystal clear on the vision for where we were headed. and what that clarity produced was more buy-in and more efficiency because we were doing the right

things the first time instead of chasing our tails. That's what strategic planning can do. And if you're not a strategic planning kind of leader, guess what? I can tell you from personal experience, you can change that identity. This is an area you've got to transform your leadership and embrace. It's not super fun. It's kind of like doing your budgeting. But I'm telling you, it gets really fun when the bottom line grows in ways that you've never.

ever imagined. It gets really fun when the team's not frustrated because they're now aligned around your vision instead of you chasing cats and trying to get everybody in the same room at the same time to make the right decisions. And look, that can be exhausting. It gets fun when it's not exhausting. So in truth, this topic is fun. You just got to do it the right way. And as Herb talked about today, there's several stages, the before, during, and after. And I said, man, there's a lot going on here. Could you put together your notes on what you're thinking about in each of these stages so that it goes really well. And so he's put together a great free resource for you so that you've got kind of a playbook. You know, next time you're thinking about doing one of these sessions and

off-site or something like that, what you've got to do is reference this. And it's a turnkey, step-by-step process to having a great strategic planning off-site. To get this free guide, just click on the link in the show notes. Well, I hope you enjoyed this episode of the Entree Leadership podcast. As always, if you know somebody that would also enjoy this episode, be a hero, share it with send them a link. We appreciate your help on that. Of course, you can watch interviews and highlights from the podcast on YouTube. Be sure to check us out over there and follow the channel. Lots of good, good stuff coming at you in addition to the podcast from the Entra Leadership Team. Hey, if you're a small business owner between two and 200 team members, we'd love to hear your

feedback on the show, ask you a few questions, learn how the show's doing for you, and learn about your business and figure out how we can make this thing better. If you want to help us out with that, just click on the link in the show notes, fill out a brief survey to schedule a call with Tim, our amazing producer. He'd love to talk with you. Also, you can follow us on social media at Entree Leadership. You can follow me on Instagram at Daniel Tarty. This episode was produced by Tim Hull. It was edited and mixed by Will Rutter. I'm your host, Daniel Tarty, and on behalf of the entire Entree Leadership team, thank you for listening. Until next time, keep learning and keep leading. If you enjoy this podcast, you should check out

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