Management review. To some, these are dirty words. To others they represent a boring meeting. Perhaps even one they can skip. It may even be a painful meeting where they have to face hard realities about their department’s performance and fight through it. There may be dread about the CEO asking questions with difficult answers. The whole thing takes too long, and we are all confused about what we need to do when it is over.
Management Review
You have most of leadership in a room to discuss business operations.
Leverage this access to get solutions where you need them.
The reality is...
Management review is a fantastic opportunity. Whatever the interval you have established, you have a summary of most business operations to review and find ways to improve. Don’t waste it.
Point One.
Management review is a tool and you should not waste it via apathy. Each department should compile the metrics relevant to their area of responsibility. I recommend this activity as a mentoring tool for newer employees especially on the engineer side. Ownership of KPIs, OKRs, whatever your metrics must be well understood and working through the quarterly or annual report for your area is an excellent training opportunity.
Point Two.
Management review is an opportunity to have real conversations about what is good and what is not. I almost said “bad”. Not the right way to phrase it. When we are looking at our performance metrics, all data and outcomes have value. If we can communicate this concept to our culture we build a more optimistic approach to any result. We should certainly celebrate the good and seek to correct the missed goals. We can use the opportunity of the review to frame events in ways to best resolve them. How the review and results are treated will either build a culture of problem solving and improvement or not. Which would you choose?
Point Three.
Management review should not end without actionable directives. It is highly unlikely you met ALL your objectives for the term. If you did, your goals aren’t hard enough. Action: to set better goals. If you missed some objectives, there had better be a rough plan to find out why and fix it. If you did your metrics right up front like you were supposed to, you would already have a solution in the pipe on your way to the review. See point one. A huge part of this is the effort and time in this meeting. Likely at least an hour with much of the leadership team. This is an expensive meeting. If no actions come out of it you have wasted a bunch of money. And time, which is also money. Don’t.
Point four.
Management review is when you should be pushing for updates to your objectives. It is a chance to ask some hard questions about your why. Your quality policy is a topic of conversation. WHY is your QP the way it is? Do you have a series of mission and vision statements tied to your QP? Are their company principles you espouse and relate to all these elements? Reaffirm your whys in this meeting And consider if your objectives and metrics drive you towards your goals. Use the time to ask again.
Point five.
I kind of already mentioned this and it bears repeating. Management review is an opportunity (another one) for departments to demonstrate ownership of their work. Not just in compiling the relevant data for the review event, it is making the time to ensure you are right about your conclusions. About looking hard at those objectives which fell short and bringing accountability to the table with your information.
Key takeaways here. Management review is an opportunity for you business to learn about itself and drive improvement. Its a designated time to re-ask your whys and be better. Management review is a reinvestment of interest in your most basic principles. The reason your organization exists.
Don’t waste it.
If you’re not sure how to leverage this mechanism in your business, reach out. I have a variety of tools and experience to help.
