Short and to-the-point – the below mentioned is based on quite a few iterations I’ve made throughout the years with my teams.
It is centered around a dedicated day for quarterly business review (QBR) and Q4 planning – which can be later on used as the base for the upcoming annual planning for 2024.
It includes preparation and some post-QBR action items.
If you find it useful and would like to have more information or alternatively dive deeper to any of the topics – feel free to comment / DM me.
QBR framework in a nutshell:
Pre QBR – “homework” :
1. Ask your team members to share their top 3-5 success stories and challenges from last Q.
2. Ask for suggested KPIs / OKRs / Areas of focus on for next Q (and year).
3. Once received – use 15-30 minutes per team to review it that it’s clear and makes general sense, prior to QBR day.
4. Ideally – share the initiate OKRs / KPIs across the marketing leaders for feedback and dependencies prior to QBR day.
* To make the equivalent session smoother during the offsite itself.
** Recommended – build a table with KPIs and dependencies attached to it prior to QBR – let me know if you’d like me to share a template for it afterwards.
QBR Day itself – outline and timelines:
* 30 minutes – Breakfast
* 15 minutes – Opening session – describe the goal of the day
* 90 minutes – Success stories and challenges from last Q
Optional – do so through a nice game for the forum (for example – “this team / person did 1, 2 and 3 – guess who’s team / person it is)
* Challenges review + mapping
* 15 minutes break
* 90 minutes – Challenges brainstorm – prioritization towards next Q (what should be handled, in what way and what should be an activity which is better to drop)
* Lunch – 1 hour (around 1pm, assuming starting at 9am)
2nd half day – planning of next Q :
* 90 minutes – Review suggested OKRs per team
Recommended – To be done preferably by marketing leaders – each one for their own activity
* 15 minutes break
* 90 minutes – Brainstorm with team to resolve high priority dependencies and fine-tune KPIs accordingly.
* 15 minutes break
* 30 minutes to set individual action items for any gaps remaining, towards post QBR- see below
* End of QBR offsite
Post QBR
* Regroup to review team’s finalized KPIs / OKRs for Q4 – If there are any remaining topics it should be taken offline
* Share summary with approved plan
Recommended – Implement the action items in your team’s task management tool as soon as plan is complete
Good luck and may Q4 be great for us all!
Anything you’d like to add to the framework?
Please share freely!
