Is it that time already?

Yes, believe it or not, it’s time to start thinking about strategic planning for 2009.  So, what should you be doing right to prepare for your planning session?

Begin loosely developing your agenda. If you’ve never done this before, here are some ideas to get started:

1. Ask your employees to begin thinking about their personal and business goals for 2009 and for five years from now.  Where do they want to be in five years?  What do they want to be doing? 

2.  Do the same thing for yourself.

3.  Now begin thinking about what your priorities are for next year.  Do you need to upgrade technology?  Do you need to get a formal comp plan in place?  Do you need to examine your service model?  How about your compliance program, is it where it needs to be?

4.  Last but not least, ask your employees for their ideas on improving your firm and for what they see as the priorities for 2009.  If you guys have alot of the same ideas, you’re probably all on the same page.  If not, there is a disconnect and the strategy session will be a great opportunity for you to find out where the disconnect happened, fix it and re-enforce the vision for the firm.

Start to put your agenda together now and then plan on having your session this fall.  Send emails to your team about once a week reminding them you are interested in their ideas for the planning session.  Two things will happen here:  you will get some great ideas and you will solidify your relationship with your employees by giving them a voice in the planning for the firm.

One caution – this is not a time for whining, complaining or any kind of negativity.  This is a positive, team building exercise and that stuff should be dealt with on a individual basis with your employees, preferably BEFORE the strategy session.

Take the time to do this right and plan for the strategy session and you will come out with a great plan for next year, accountability for the subsequent tasks and an excited team!

Please feel free to call or email me if you’d like to talk about this further.