OpsLab annual review and planning guide for entrepreneurs and visionaries.

The end of the calendar year is a few days away, giving us the perfect opportunity to reflect on the year that was and plan for the year that will be. It’s easy to just consider the future and create goals and action plans, but failure to reflect will eventually manifest as a failure to grow.

What is the Eisenhower Matrix

The Eisenhower Matrix, is a straightforward framework that helps you categorize tasks based on their urgency and importance. This method encourages you to evaluate the long-term value of your daily activities, steering you towards efficiency over mere activity.

Reflecting

We need to take a step back to analyze what worked and what didn’t, what we want to do more of and what we need to stop. This reflection is best done during a clarity break where you set aside a few hours and go to a quiet and calm place. This could be your home office, terrace, the beach, or a cafe; you pick. Take a notebook and a pen and answer the following 5 questions. You can do this for both your personal life and professional life, but as entrepreneurs, we know that these are typically very intertwined.

1. What created energy this year?
2. What drained energy this year?
3. Who and what are the anchors holding me back?
4. What were my greatest hits and worst misses?
5. What are the biggest lessons I learned this year?

Answering these questions will allow you to zoom out and get perspective. I can not recommend this exercise enough and encourage you to try it!

Before shifting into a planning mindset ask yourself:

• Where am I playing small that I could be playing much, much bigger?
• What is holding me back from playing that bigger game?
• Is it rational or emotional?

These questions will help you identify what you truly want. Be honest with yourself

Annual Planning

After reflecting, we move to planning mode, specifically annual planning. For planning, just like when reflecting, we need to consider both our personal and professional life. You can have goals related to your business, health, family, relationships, personal life or any category that you choose.

The annual planning framework I recommend has 3 connected components:

1. Big Annual Goals
2. Quarterly Goals
3. Daily Systems

Here is how it works:

1. Big Annual Goals

These are your big year-long goals. Take a moment and think about December 2024, in one year from today how do you want to feel and what do you want to have achieved?

Turn these thoughts into your annual goals. You want to have 1 to 4 big annual goals. The goals should feel uncomfortable and audacious. They reflect your big dreams and motivate you to continue when things get difficult. The goals need to be specific and measurable.

1. Quarterly Goals 

The quarterly goals are a breakdown of your big annual goals. They are your milestones or checkpoints to make sure you are on track to achieving your annual goal. Quarterly goals allow you to reassess every 3 months and course correct if you are off track. 

1. Daily Systems

Once goals are defined we need to figure out how we are going to achieve them. This is where systems and daily action come in. For each goal write down 2 to 3 daily actions you will take to get you closer to your goals. Small daily actions will compound over time if you are consistent. 

Here is an illustrative example of what the framework looks like in action:

• Big Annual Goal: “Work with 30 new clients by the end of 2024”
• Quarterly Goal: “Sign 7 client agreements from my Q4 2023 pipeline, and add 3 more prospects to my pipeline”
• Daily System: “Connect with 5 new prospects on LinkedIn or Twitter, touch base with one referral contact and spend 30 minutes writing content”.

This annual planning process is a life-changing exercise. I cannot recommend it highly enough. I use a similar approach when I do annual planning workshops with my clients and it is the best way to have an aligned, meaningful and productive year.