Launching Leaders Into 2025

Using your offsite energy for organizational clarity and growth

December 16, 2024

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Intro

Leaders Taking the Time, Will Create Time & Leverage Later

Do you want to prioritize your leaders and business, getting aligned, develop the big picture for an organization, and set the direction forward with passion, purpose, vision, and a roadmap? Then it’s a must to take the time out of the business, get clear, and to create more time later. The investment now plays a big role in how swamped or out of sync you are with your leadership team in the future.

Efficiencies and leverage are gained by looking at how we can make a better business, not be drowning in the daily fires of the ongoing business. It’s critical to pull your self out and above to have a high level overview of what we are building and what’s going on.

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The Story

Leaders Taking the Time, Will Create Time & Leverage Later

I wonder why some companies don’t provide the time and space to allow for leaders to connect, reflect, prepare, strategize, and plan out focus for 2025. There seems to be so much time on budgeting, performance reviews, QBRs, AOPs, and other corporate processes, but the need for stepping out of the business for more big picture perspective is critical. This can look different in each company given size, scope, structure, and the phase they are currently in.

I was fortunate to attend parts of a couple 2025 planning sessions recently, and also hosted a leadership retreat (offsite). I found the connection, ideation, and energy coming from sessions like this yields potential outcomes that are too valuable to pass up. Whether you use it to plan out 2025, launch 2025, or refresh 2025, that is based on your own business priorities and schedules, but the practice of stepping out of your business and looking where you came from, where you are, where you are going, and how you are going to get there, is critical.

This is not some massive corporate rah rah session or major conference with partners, clients, or half your company—this is your key leaders, those who can know all the intimate details with financials, decisions, and real biz stuff, and should know all, and who should shape the strategic direction of your firm.

Why?

The risk of not doing it outweighs the temporary disruption of investing in sessions like this. A workshop of founders, C-Suite, or senior leaders (SLT), can produce the collective power you need to build great unity, energy, and results.

Here’s a bit of what I took away from these sessions:

Weekly to Offsite Cadence

Of course it must work for you business nuance, but here is what I would recommend building in your firm’s annual schedule:

Daily stand up for work closer to the direct front line leadership
For periods of more rigorous projects or intense work periods, weekly or monthly SLT sessions focused on specific topics
In-depth leadership session quarterly, half-day minimum (QBR, SLT, etc)
Long term planning session annually

White Board Planning Session

Values, Purpose, Communication, Collaboration, and Passion —> building a vision delivered by a roadmap that builds an organization for tomorrow. Allowing leaders a voice to share their thoughts, and then build a collective path forward allows everyone a voice, but brings unity to the forefront as one leadership team. You must be one team regardless of department responsibilities or specialty areas. Not 5 different functions trying to work together—1 Team, delivering a unified message with our own individual styles and methods to run our own businesses within the firm, giving them the attention and nuance required, yet we come back to 1 Team.

FIRM 2.0

WORK —> STRUCTURE —> PEOPLE —> Tech »»»»»[Vision: 12/31/2027]

»»»»Roadmap»»»»

Leadership Retreat

Hosting a leadership retreat was amazing. This was the first I had led as an outsider, an advisor or consultant, a coach. It was so much fun.

The Concept

Prep - planning the event sparked a lot of thoughts for me about what I enjoy. Fitting so much in with the limited time is important, but it was critical to avoid over-scheduling and not making the meeting rushed, scattered, or too stuffed with meaty topics, yet it still allowing for the more in depth conversation and discovery. Quality over volume or ultra-efficiency.

Delivery - once we got beyond the more awkward, hey I know you only from zoom, so re-intro in person with a handshake or hug, it was time to get down to it. It felt so natural to dive in and add value however I could.

Takeaways - the connection between people, the spark of pride and thought about the business, the energy created from seeing how far the firm has already come, and the potential for where we want it to go. It’s all about aligned clarity amongst the SLT. The Values & Vision Workshop is where you get real about who you are, what you really want, and what you are committing to doing with taking action to make your vision a reality.

Aftermath - share the pictures of our white board, vision template, and recommendations

Collective energy channeled in one direction, drives results, building the business we want and need, not allowing the business to run us. These sessions drive inspired action, and allow for growth of ordinary or good leaders, to become extraordinary stewards of business, and a catalyst for transformation and growth.

If leaders throw it back with- “we need more action, less meetings”. I agree, they are wasteful and DRAINING. No one enjoys pointless meetings, unless you love to waste time. And how do you get more action and less meetings?

By getting stronger inspired alignment—a reason for people at all levels to care. No one cares about your firm, unless you give them a reason to care.

Let’s see how strong the action and alignment is after a solid offsite…you won’t recognize your team if you plan and follow through with the right kind of session. Your future is worth a few hours to plan and build a vision for what it will look like.

How do you ensure these sessions live on? Repeat. Remind. Align. Act.

Make it happen every day with inspired action and impact someone along the way.

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Supporting Content - For More to the Story

Graham Peelle

grahampeelle.com/founder-gtm

Hopefully, this added a little value to your business or leadership journey. Thank you for reading. If you think this may help someone else, please repost ♻️ or share. Thanks for being here. 🌍🏔️.

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