Business reviews – how much is not too much?

This is a question that all leaders must have asked themselves at some point in time in the process of conducting business. The entire business cycle - ideation, simulation, conception, planning, execution, delivery, feedback and back to ideation – must be reviewed periodically along multiple themes and viewpoints and across multiple levels of detail – strategic and tactical down to transactional. Reviews could be for financial performance, customer satisfaction, employee productivity, sales forecasts and fulfillment planning, name the thing.

It is important to take a step back and understand the fundamental need for business reviews.

It could be to –

·         track and monitor progress and status against a plan (review of performance), for e.g.

o   business plan for the organization, a function, a process, a charter, a project

o   employee performance

o   customer experience / satisfaction

·         review the output of a business process (review of a deliverable), for e.g.

o   proposal, quotation, contract review

o   design review

·         ensure compliance to procedures, statutes, rules, policies et al, for e.g.

o   process quality reviews

o   legal/statutory audits

Well, the intent was not to put together an exhaustive list but to give insights into what kind of reviews are typically done in any organization and to zero-in on the particular category that we are trying to address here. For the purpose of this discussion, we will confine ourselves to the first sub-bullet of the first category and just call it, business reviews.

At one end of the spectrum, there are people and businesses that just believe in and focus on doing things. They do not have formal review mechanisms and are fairly ad-hoc in their method and periodicity of reviews. Not all of them summarily fail in their businesses but the element of predictability, sustenance and people-independence of such a business’ outcome and results is suspect. At the other end of the spectrum are people and organizations that are, simply put, either ‘control freaks’ or ‘consensus committees’. There is, in such cases, an elaborate process to review with set periodicity, not only the business and its performance, but the review process themselves, the policies, procedures, people, everything! There are preventive reviews and when they fail, corrective ones; proactive and reactive reviews, reviews of the review process where its effectiveness and efficiency is reported, consolidated and reviewed!!

There are many organizations where business metrics like revenue forecasts, sales and opportunity pipeline, hiring performance etc are measured, reported and reviewed on a weekly basis. There are systems being built to have a general ledger view across businesses and geographies on a daily basis. There are monthly account reviews and quarterly business performance reviews with 30-60-90 day action plans which are reviewed, you guessed it right, every 30 days. There are week-long annual business strategy and planning meets, a month of preparation before and another month of communication after, quarterly employee performance feedback, annual performance and compensation reviews. The entire business reporting cycle is on a weekly basis with the preparation, review and action plan spanning a day. Such organizations spend more management time reviewing what was done and the plans of what is to be done, often more than 50% of their time! And they would report their low productivity numbers periodically, review them, have an action plan to improve it and review that diligently all over again!!

So, jokes apart, what is the ideal periodicity of a business review? Is there an absolute answer across businesses, organizations, cultures, and the product-process-people ecosystem? How do you determine what to review, when to review and how to review?

There are no absolute answers but here are some pointers to what may or may not work for you…

1.       Try to find a correlation between action items that emerge from your reviews and their significance to the business. If there is a positive correlation, the review is a value-add.

2.       Recap what was reported in the previous review – if the numbers, issues, line-items, trends haven’t changed much, you should revisit the periodicity of your reviews – it is, perhaps, too often?

3.       Drop into the reviews conducted by your direct reports – if the content (and indeed, the template) of the report is similar to your reviews, ask yourself if there is any value in the same facts being reviewed twice and at what level in your organization are the action items owned. One of the reviews is, obviously, redundant!

4.       Revisit the objectives and process of your reviews – are you using these as mechanisms for you to understand what’s happening in your business? Does everyone just run through the data in standard reports that are brought into the meeting or is there an opinion, perception, value beyond the data? Could you be gathering this information offline? Do you really need a meeting to comprehend data?

5.       In the worst case, if you are unable to figure out if there is a value-add or otherwise, cancel a review but still call for and track the data. This will be most revealing!

6.       The 10-20-30 rule. And finally, as a golden rule – if you are spending more than 10% of effort at any level of the organization in reviews (of any kind), you’ve tipped over. If you are spending more than 20% of that review effort in tracking and monitoring business that has already been conducted (as a corollary, at least 80% of your reviews have to focus on business that is likely to come in the future), you’ve tipped over.  If you are spending more than 30% of that effort in audit-mode or finding-holes-mode of reviews, you’ve tipped over.

Note: The views expressed here and in any of my posts are my personal views and not to be construed as being shared by any organization or group that I am or have been associated with presently or in the past.