Strategic review. For some executives the words mean shaping the future; for others, another day of slides and stale sandwiches. The difference is entirely in how it is run.
A strategic review is a regularly scheduled session of the executive leadership team to examine what has been working and what has not in the direction of the company, and to decide the adjustments that will maintain or improve performance. Run well, it resets the pace, confirms alignment, and makes the decisions that count most. Run badly, it is a status meeting with better coffee.
Five things every effective review has
Clear, simple data and graphics distributed before the meeting, not presented in it. Common, agreed measures from timely sources. A link back to the vital few assumptions about the future, quantified. Explicit commitment from every participant to prepare, so contributions rest on data rather than opinion. And a comparison of should and is: the projections the strategy made, against what actually happened.
When those five hold, a review takes four hours. Over time a process emerges that keeps the room on the high-level decisions and out of the weeds, which is where executives drift when the data is weak.
What changed
Written in 2019. The five themes are now the agenda of the monthly review in the MOVE® system, tool seven: the page is the pre-read, the Strategic Numbers are the agreed measures, root cause on every variance is the should-versus-is comparison, and something changes before the meeting ends. The four hours have become two.
Monday
Look at the agenda for your next leadership meeting. If it lists reports to be presented rather than decisions to be made, it is not a strategic review. Rewrite it as five questions.
