Tag Archives: Quarterly Review

6 Steps to Your Business Quarterly Review

Here are 6 simple steps to carry out your Business Quarterly Review:

Step 1 – Review your business goals, the metrics you use to indicate progress and the progress itself

Are your goals still relevant?

Ensuring the goals you set at the beginning of the year are still relevant is critical to the success of your business. Having irrelevant goals means you are traveling in the wrong direction which is almost worse than having no goals!

It has never been more important to have relevant, clear, defined, meaningful, achievable and realistic business goals given the changes that have happened to business’s since the start of 2020.

Are the goals you set at the start of 2022 still relevant to you and your business?

Are you prioritising development of and respect for you and your team?

The success of your business is directly correlated to the amount of time you spend developing and supporting your people.

There is no greater way to spend your time than supporting, developing and showing respect to your people.

Do your goals still align with your Business Vision, Mission, True North and Values?

Your Vision is your direction.

No Vision, no direction, no progress!

Do your goals still align to your Vision, Mission, True North & Values of your business?

Are you regularly communicating your Vision, Mission, True North & Values to your people?

Are you regularly making decisions aligned with your Vision, Mission, True North & Values?

If not, your direction exists only on paper which is not the best place to have it!

Note: If you don’t have a Vision, Mission, True North & Values, now would be a good time to start thinking about creating these. No matter where you are in terms of your business, it is never too late to make positive change and that starts with Vision, Mission, True North & Values.

Do you have the correct metrics in place?

Your metrics should highlight progress towards your goals and should also highlight obstacles that get in the way of progress towards your goals,

Do your metrics highlight progress towards your goals?

Do your metrics highlight obstacles that get in the way of progress towards your goals?

When do you review these metrics?

Are you measuring the right things?

Are your metrics at the right level?

Are you improving your processes?

If you are not improving your processes, chances are your metrics are standing still or going backwards!

Process improvements = metrics moving in the right direction = goals achieved

Have you made as much progress as you planned in the past quarter?

Have you enjoyed the progress made or has it been an uphill struggle?

Have you over stretched yourself?

Have you under stretched yourself?

Step 2 – Evaluate what worked in terms of your goals, how were you successful?

What worked for you in the past quarter?

What did you do that enabled this success?

What areas of your business were successful?

What parts of your business did you enjoy?

Step 3 – Evaluate what didn’t work in terms of your goals, what got in the way of success?

What didn’t work for you and got in the way of your goals?

How did you deal with and overcome these obstacles?

What areas of your business were unsuccessful?

What parts of your business did you not enjoy?

Step 4 – Make informed decisions about what your key focus areas for the next quarter

Based on the answers to all of the above, what ACTION will you take for the next quarter?

Strategy reviews are only as good as the ACTIONS that are taken as a result of those reviews.

How can you support, develop and respect your people more in Q2? #PeopleFirst 😊

Are your 2022 goals still achievable based on progress made in the last quarter?
Do you need more goals to stretch yourself?
Do you need less goals to stop over stretching yourself?
Are there goals that no longer serve you?
What are your priority goals for the next quarter?
What are your non priority goals for the next quarter?
What will you do to continue progress in successful areas of your business?
What will you do to learn from and turn around unsuccessful areas of your business?
How will you measure progress of your goals in the next quarter?
What metrics will you update, add, remove?
How often will you update these metrics?
Where will you document your goals, metrics, progress?
How will you communicate your plans to your team?

Step 5 – Document your strategy, goals, metrics & progress

It’s really important to capture your goals, metrics & progress on your goals somewhere. Whether you prefer physically putting pen to paper or to use something electronic there are so many options. The science behind why writing things down to enable success is outlined in the amazing book

‘Write It Down, Make It Happen’.

My favourite tools are below,

Physical – I love Moleskine journals for tracking progress of goals & journalling. Moleskine journals are colourful, hard wearing, long lasting journals of the highest quality. It doesn’t really matter what you use from once you write your goals down and track progress daily, weekly, monthly and quarterly that will, at the end of the year, result in your Annual Review.

Online – My tools of choice online are Google Docs & Google Sheets and Google Slides. These are almost identical to Microsoft WordExcel and PowerPoint.

I use Asana for Project Management and absolutely love it. It has an app which is super simple to use and keeps everything in the one place and all super organised.

These tools are all ABSOLUTELY FREE, are very easy to use and are all you need to set and track progress in your business.

Step 6 – Learn more about Lean Business Strategy

The longer I work in Lean Business Strategy the more I learn.

There is always another level of Lean Business Strategy to move into and there is always so much to learn.

Your will learn the most about your business from your people. Take the tine to listen to them and prioritise their development. There is no end to what your talented people can teach you if you give the time to listen and learn!

If you are looking for a book on Lean Business Strategy, I highly recommend ‘Getting The Right Things Done’ by Pascal Dennis and really any other books by Pascal Dennis.

This is my bible in terms of Lean Business Strategy and Pascal Dennis is one of my favourite Lean mentors.

Getting The Right Things Done is an incredible book that can be visited again and again as you move deeper & deeper into the world of Business Strategy and success.

Below is a list of mentors that I follow and have learned so much from over the years from their books, podcasts etc – Marie Forleo, Amy Porterfield, Katie Anderson, Karen Martin, Pascal Dennie, Brendon Burchard, Robin Sharma, Tony Robbins, Simon Sinek, Dr Wayne Dyer (RIP), Deepak Chopra, Eckhart Tolle. There are many more but these are my favourites!

I wish you success, health and happiness as you look back at Q1 and even more success, health and happiness as you look forward to Q2,

Want to read more about Positive Change?

Download your free e-book ‘The A-Z of Effective Change’ below.

Thanks for reading,

Siobhain

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4 Steps To Your 12 Week Review

1. Step 1 is all about what went well over the past 12 weeks

i. What worked well for you in the past 12 weeks?

What did you do that you enjoyed?

What worked out exactly how you wanted or better than you wanted?

There are so many blessings in our lives each and every day, sometimes it’s just a matter of taking a closer look to find them.

You may see that life goes your way more than you may realise.

Take your time with this, work through every area of your life, focus on the small stuff first – as it’s the small stuff that is really the big stuff!

Using a daily gratitude journal can really help answering this question. If you don’t have a daily gratitude journal maybe it’s something you could start for the next 12 weeks.

Even just one gratitude a day over 12 weeks is about 90 things to be grateful for over 12 weeks, wouldn’t that be something really lovely to look back and reflect on?

ii. What did you do that supported this success?

How did you bring success into your life?

How did you contribute to the things that worked well for you?

The only person who has control over your life is you and the only life you can control is your own. Keeping that in mind, all success in your life starts and ends with you.

No-one is going to improve your life for you, no-one is going to set and reach your goals for you, yes, it’s all on YOU!

Did you work hard at something and then reap the rewards?

Did you make sacrifices to improve your life?

Knowing how you contribute to your own success means you can build on this to bring so much more success into your life.

iii. What brought you joy and happiness in the past 12 weeks?

When were you at your happiest over the past 12 weeks?

Think about what you were doing, who were you with, where were you?

Knowing what brings us happiness allows us to create more time to bring more happiness and joy into our lives.

Who doesn’t want to be happier and more joyful?

Knowing who brings you happiness means you can create more time to spend with these very special people.

You want to be spending as much time as possible with those who bring out the best in you. The more you bring out the best in yourself, the more you can bring out the best in others.

iv. Are you happy with where you spent your time over the past 12 weeks?

Time is so precious – we all have 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 52 weeks in a year but nobody knows how many years we have.

This realisation always makes me so determined to live life to the fullest every single day and that means spending my time where I am happy spending it.

Where did your precious time go over the past 12 weeks?

Are you happy with where your time was spent over the past 12 weeks?

Are you fully enjoying every minute of your days, weeks, months?

That’s Step 1 of your Personal 12 Week Review done!

2. Step 2 is all about what didn’t work well for you in the past 12 weeks

i. What didn’t go well over the past 12 weeks

What didn’t go your way in the past 12 weeks?

What happened that you didn’t enjoy?

What didn’t go to plan?

What is holding you back from living your best life?

Challenges and obstacles are a normal part of life.

No matter how much we plan, no matter how much we try to control our plans there are times when things just don’t go our way. Acknowledgment and acceptance of this fact is the first step to turning challenges & obstacles into opportunities.

Acknowledging when things don’t work out takes bravery and courage and also an understanding that it is completely normal.

How can you acknowledge and accept what doesn’t work out for you and understand this is all part of your path?

ii. What obstacles got in your way?

Looking back at the past 12 weeks, were there obstacles that got in your way? Did you get in your own way?

Obstacles & challenges can turn into opportunities for success if we take the time to evaluate and learn from them.

The question to ask here is what can you do to eliminate these obstacles & challenges and if you can’t eliminate them how can you think about them differently?

We all have compete control over our thoughts and just reframing things in our mind can turn obstacles & challenges into opportunities for success.

Dr Wayne Dyer’s book ‘Change Your Thoughts, Change Your Life’ teaches us that all we have to do to change what is not going well in our lives is to think differently about it. A most profound book, I highly recommend it.

iii. What didn’t bring you joy and happiness in the past 12 weeks?

Happiness and unhappiness go hand in hand. No human life is devoid of unhappiness just like no human life is devoid of happiness.

Acceptance of this goes a long way to find out what exactly makes us unhappy.

When were you at your unhappiest over the past 12 weeks? Think about what you were doing, who were you with, where were you?

Knowing what makes us unhappy allows us to think deeper about the role certain people, situations, interactions and places play in our levels of happiness.

There is no such thing as the perfect life that is happy all the time, however there is a level of contentment and inner peace that can be reached by understanding what takes our happiness & joy away and working to avoid, eliminate or understand more about this.

What could you have done to understand and alleviate your unhappiness?

iii. Where would you have liked to have spent more time over the past 12 weeks?

Where would you have liked to have spent more time over the past 12 weeks?

Think about all of the key areas of your life from your Wheel of Life – did you spend too much time in some areas and not enough in others?

What areas would you have liked to have spent more time in?

How balanced is your life in terms of where you spend your time?

That’s Step 2 of your Personal 12 Week Review done!

3. Step 3 is all about what you learned in the key areas of your life

The only way we grow and evolve as humans is by learning more and by turning these learnings into action that propels us forward.

Reflect on the questions below to understand what you learned over the past 12 weeks in all of the key areas of your life.

Sense of Self – What did you learn about yourself? How did you grow and evolve as a person? Have you dedicated time to personal development? What did you learn about your relationship with yourself, has your relationship with yourself improved?

Relationships – What did you learn about your relationship with others, has your relationship with others improved? Are there relationships you want but don’t have? Are there relationships you have but don’t want?

Health is Wealth – What did you learn about your physical, mental, emotional & spiritual health? Did your physical, mental, emotional & spiritual health improve?

Work – What did you learn about your work? Are you growing and developing in your work? Has your work moved forward and improved?

Finance – What did you learn about personal finance? Did your personal finance improve?

Fun/Experiences – What did you learn about fun & experiences? How can you bring more fun into your life? What experiences have you enjoyed? What experiences have you not enjoyed?

Environment – What did you learn about your environment? Did your environment improve? For me environment relates to my home and also our planet, both are of immense importance to me and bring me happiness and joy.

Contribution – What did you learn about contribution? Did you make the world a better place by giving your time, money or skills? Giving doesn’t have to be grand gestures, giving in the smallest possible way can often be the most impactful.

That’s Step 3 of your Personal 12 Week Review done!

4. Step 4 is about learning more about personal goal setting & reviewing.

i. Do you set personal annual, quarterly, monthly, weekly and daily goals?

Yes – great, are you reaching these goals daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly and annually?

No – why not? What is keeping you from setting & reaching your personal goals?

ii. Do you celebrate and learn from your successes?

Yes – great, keep celebrating every single success, no matter how small! Look out for the small successes, they really are the big things!

No – when are you going to start celebrating your successes, each and every one of them, each and every day?

iii. Do you reflect on and learn from your challenges?

Yes – great, keep reflecting and learning. Reflecting on what happens and what doesn’t happen is one of the most powerful ways we can learn.

No – when are you going to start reflecting and learning from your challenges, each and every one of them, each and every day?

iv.How do you like to learn about personal goal setting and reviewing?

It’s one thing setting goals, working towards them and reviewing progress. It’s another thing to continue to learn about what you want from your life and how to achieve that.

Do you like learning about yourself and your life? Learning is the key to success as you are the only person who can bring success into your life.

What is your preferred way of learning – through books, podcasts, courses, videos, mentors, coaches, your work, observing the world, observing others, observing yourself, through reflection?

Whatever your preferred way of learning is, make sure it is part of your daily plans for the next 12 weeks.

That’s Step 4 of your Personal 12 Week Review done.

I wish you success, health and happiness as you look back at the past 12 weeks and even more success, health and happiness as you look forward to the next 12 weeks.

I write a weekly newsletter on all things positive change, if you want to join me download your free ebook ‘The A-Z of Effective Change’ below and you’re all signed up!