As part of the planning model you must conduct self-evaluations. This means taking a hard look at your last year’s performance and a second look at your overall performance from a historical view. Usually there is no shortage of charts and graphs depicting how well you did financially for the past year. The analysis usually includes one or more previous years, depending on the size print and complexity of the chart. It always includes actual performance against projected performance. Usually these are just numbers drills.
To be truly effective you need to have some lessons learned. You need to know why the numbers went up or down. Thought must be given to why spikes occurred in your performance. A poor showing cannot be written off as the result of a bad economy or an unexpected downturn. These are simply excuses for mediocre management performance. This analysis is where you start to sort out the serious planning session from the weekend at the golf resort session. Often managers are unprepared to talk specifics of the current business situation of their industry at a planning session. This can only mean these people came to the meeting unprepared. At your next planning session have your principal attendees give a short briefing to the team on the status of their portion of the business. This can be assigned as homework in the preconference briefing.
This means they are doing more than just building houses. Both executives are involved and have a genuine interest in how their company fits into the social fabric of the community. They spend a considerable amount of time with customers, other builders, and the trades. This pays off with a multiplier effect.