90-Day Sprint – Monitor & Maintain Results
Step 8: Monitor & Maintain Results (Ongoing After Week 13)
To prevent any reversal of your efforts in your company, you must maintain a monthly or quarterly reporting.
Keep in mind the saying, what gets measured gets managed.
Investor Package
Recently, we had a client who hired us. This investor owned five companies and reported the numbers. One of the things we usually did was prepare an investor package. In the investor package, most accounting financial types will give the financial team a whole mess of numbers – a stack of financial reports in black and white, and a lot of detail. However, what the management team and the executive committees really want is more analysis/results and less data.
As a result, we put together the investor package, which takes a summary of the information (including some financial statements) but then prepares graphs of the analysis and KPI’s to communicate in a more consistent format across the companies.
12 on 12 Analysis
Another tool we use to monitor is the 12 on 12 Analysis. This is another execution plan that we provide, where you take the last 12 months and compare it to the most recent 12 months. If there’s no change, you would report zero. If there was a 10% change, it would be plus or minus 10.
The purpose of this is to take the seasonality out of the analysis. January may be slower than December, but in this case, it will tell you the past 12 months in the previous year if you’re growing or shrinking. You would use this to identify turning points in the company, and gives you the ability to predict the future.
Why Current Events Matter
Our final advice to you is that you should read. You should keep up with the events happening in or related to your industry. If you’re going to be a leader, you need to see what’s going to happen 3-6 months from now.
You wouldn’t go outside without first checking to see if it is going to rain. Don’t go to work without some idea of the state of the local or national economy!