The Business Club.
← Emerging Leadership Team
Workshop14 min readFocus · August

Quarterly Planning

A two-day offsite agenda your team will actually use.

Focus for August

Pre-stage Q4

August: Q4 priorities pre-staged in August land in October.

Refreshes on the 1st of every month

Don't wait for the September off-site to think about Q4. Sketch the priorities now so the planning conversation is editing, not inventing.

  • Each LT member drafts Q4 candidates by Aug 31
  • Resource conflicts flagged before September
  • Q4 frame circulated by mid-September
  • Off-site refines and locks
01

Day one — look back

  1. Welcome + ground rules (15 min)
  2. Last quarter's rocks: each owner reports done/not done with one-sentence reason (45 min)
  3. Scorecard review: trends, not just last week (45 min)
  4. Financial review: P&L, balance sheet, cash, vs. plan (60 min)
  5. Customer headlines: wins, losses, themes (30 min)
  6. Team headlines: hires, departures, capacity gaps (30 min)
  7. Lunch + walking break
  8. Issues list: brainstorm everything blocking us (45 min)
  9. IDS — Identify, Discuss, Solve top 5 issues (2 hrs)
  10. Day 1 recap and homework for tomorrow (15 min)
02

Day two — look forward

  1. Vision check: are we still pointed at the right horizon? (45 min)
  2. 1-year goals review (30 min)
  3. Brainstorm next quarter's possible rocks (60 min)
  4. Narrow to 3-7 company rocks (45 min)
  5. Each leader drafts 1-3 personal rocks (45 min)
  6. Lunch
  7. Rock SMART check: every rock has owner, deliverable, due date (60 min)
  8. Cascade plan: what gets communicated to the team and how (45 min)
  9. Calendar next quarter's offsite + book the room (10 min)
  10. Round-robin: one word for how you're leaving the offsite (10 min)
03

What to leave the room with

  • One-page quarterly plan (rocks, owners, due dates)
  • Updated scorecards published in your shared system
  • Cascade message drafted and ready to send
  • Next offsite on calendars before you leave
  • Issues list rolled forward — nothing gets lost
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