Week 13 Focus – Quarterly Check In: Skills
Focus Question: What have you accomplished in this last quarter? What are the tasks you want to undertake in the next quarter?


Description
In addition to building in time for weekly and monthly planning, it’s also important that we build in time for quarterly planning. For some, it may be easier to break down annual goals into quarterly milestones and micro-projects. For others, you might work upwards from monthly themes and projects to quarterly plans.
A quarterly check in can look different for each virtual professional or business owner. From dedicating an hour for review to ear-marking a full day with the team to review and plan for the time ahead. Be sure to use the weekly, monthly and annual resources available to you in the workbook planner.

Research/Story
Create a quarterly review day. Put a date on the calendar every quarter can help to update certain tasks. Set a date in your calendar to look at the following quarterly items:
A. Review financials – sales, expenses, revenue. What needs to be changed? Where is revenue going? What is cash flow like? What about the accumulation of debt?
What is the financial data saying? What is that status around invoicing and accounts payable.
B. Update your metrics. Complete your statistics.
What are the things you are tracking in the Monthly Daily Trackers?
Over the course of the last 3 months ask yourself:

• What are the patterns you are noticing?      
• What has shifted?
• What has stayed the same?
• What are you surprised about?
  

C. Note programming/services delivered:

• What have you been doing?
• What has been selling?
• What engagements did you get – speaking, coaching, training?
• How much volume of work have you been involved in creating and/or delivering? What’s working? What’s not?

Ensure that you have a footprint or record of your work - What was the focus of your work, major achievements, contact details. Have you put a copy of material in your portfolio (digital or hard-copy)?
D. Focus on project related work:

• What are the projects you are STARTING?
• What are the projects IN PROCESS?
• What are the projects you are COMPLETING?

E. Examine resourcing:
What resourcing is helping you? Consider:

• Materials
• People
• IT

What are the contingency resources available to you and you ok?
F. Content Creation and Visibility:

• What is on your content calendar for the next series of time?
• What content have you created that you can scale or replicate?

Client/Customer log and statistics. How much coaching are you doing? What skills have you been leveraging?
G. Organizational Learning Check Point

• What’s working and what’s not?
• What key learning has been undertaken?
• What learning needs are there going forward?

H. What are the other things you want to review?
I. Looking ahead – What are the main priorities for the next 3 months?
What are the creative projects which are going to pull you forward?

Activity
Schedule in 15-30 minutes to undertake your quarterly review. It might include a selection of these questions listed above.

As part of the review you might also undertake or revisit any self-assessments such as Wheels you have completed.

In both the Coaching Business Builder and PlanDoTrack, I have included a Wheel of Small Business Mastery (page 8 in Coaching Business Builder, or page 27/28 in PlanDoTrack) and/or Virtual and Remote Work page 14 in PlanDoTrack).

Take a few minutes to score yourself and revisit where you are at. What has shifted? What new skills have you learned or started to master due to use? What new skills are required on the horizon?

Connection to the Workbook and Planner
In addition to the wheels there are four sets of quarterly tools throughout the two planners. Be sure to take some time to explore these tools in Section 5 of the Workbook/Planner:
Quarterly To Dos – Use this to capture key to-dos in each of the 4 quarters of the year. Some professionals will use this as a warehouse over the course of the year.
Quarterly reflections: Use the chart to capture:

• Projects
• Achievements
• Learning
• Opportunities

Quarterly Planner Sheet: Use the one page to identify your top 5 goals for that period, identifying projects, also highlight key task on each month (5 weeks outline per month)
Finally, join Jennifer for a live or on-demand quarterly planning session where she provides you with a step-by-step series of questions to think about for your quarterly plan.

Download a one-page copy of this week's 52 Weeks of Plan, Do and Track here.

Best wishes, 
Jennifer

Read and download the initial weeks of the 52 weeks of Plan, Do and Track

​Jennifer Britton - Potentials Realized
Author of PlanDoTrack (2019),  Coaching Business Builder (2018), Effective Virtual Conversations (2017) and From One to Many: Best Practices for Team and Group Coaching (2013). Pick up a copy of any of her books at Amazon
Book Jennifer for a coaching session to explore productivity, teamwork and business issues.
Contact her by phone at (416)996-8326
Check out the new 19 Productivity Tips on-demand program. Explore this video based program at  your own pace, and join Jennifer for bi-weekly calls as part of your course.
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​Has spring sprung in your part of the world? We are just around the corner from Q2 and I thought it would be useful to focus this week’s blog post on 10 Questions to ask in setting your Q2 goals.

1. How am I on target with my 2019 goals?
2. What were my major accomplishments during Q1? (Think about yourself and your team?)
3. What systems helped? What systems need attention?
4. Where is revenue/sales/impact coming from?
5. What activities are giving me/us results?
6. What can I do to magnify these?
7. Where do I need to become more efficient in my work? More effective?
8. What needs attention?
9. What am I doing to build relationships?
10. What are the items and conversations which are important to note and carry forward?

When did I last revisit my SWOT?  (A key strategic planning tool is the SWOT – if you are not familiar with this, be sure to check out the exercise in description of Section 4 of the PlanDoTrack Workbook and Planner)

What is going to provide you with efficiency and effectiveness for Spring?
​
Best wishes,
Jennifer

 
​FEbruary has been earmarked as National Time Management month. As such, I thought that it would be appropriate to focus several of our posts specifically to time management and personal productivity, two key themes as part of the PlanDoTrack Workbook and Planner. Stay tune for posts this month focused on getting your remote workspace more organized (Next Monday February 11th) as well as a number of other time management posts.
Our first post of the month gets you to step back and do a bit of planning BEFORE you embark on your monthly activities. As a former project manager myself, I know how important planning is in creating more focused effort! An old project management adage goes "5 minutes of planning can save you 60 minutes of unfocused effort". 
As much as some things change, many things stay the same, and whether you plan on paper, the back of a receipt or on your phone, planning is planning.
To get you started, here are a couple of questions to consider:

• What's important for you to tackle this month?
• What are the key priorities you want to keep top of mind?
• What will success look like around these key priorities?
• What is the dedicated time you are going to protect to make sure that these priorities do get done?
• What do you need to say no to (by delegating, deferring or saying no) this month?
• What are  you going to track to make sure you are on target?
• Who else do you want to enlist to support you with your key priorities this month?

I'll be doing a few more extra posts this month, focused specifically on time management and personal productivity. I hope you'll join us!

If you have a copy of the PlanDoTrack Workbook and Planner, be sure to check out Section 4 where I include several different tools and resources to support you with prioritizing.

Enjoy!
Jennifer

Jennifer Britton - Potentials Realized
Author of PlanDoTrack (2019), Effective Virtual Conversations (2017) and From One to Many: Best PRactices for Team and Group Coaching (2013)