MEETINGS

Keeping Your Strategy Meetings Focused on

the Long Term
by Sabina Nawaz
JULY 27, 2017
Mauricio is president of the European operation for a Fortune 500 manufacturing firm, and his firm has had its trials lately. The
company recently took a hit on the stock market. One of its major suppliers is under an ethics investigation resulting in significant
delays. And a very visible acquisition under Mauricio’s leadership is struggling.
Some of these issues demanded immediate attention, but they all could have been avoided or addressed before becoming crises if
Mauricio, his peers, and their teams had started discussing them a year ago — when they were at a strategic level, rather than an
operational one.

Mauricio knew that he must carve out time for strategic conversations with his leadership team, but during a one-on-one coaching
session he told me he was puzzled. When he had suggested to his leadership team that they have these conversations, people had
nodded their heads and said they’d raise strategic agenda items. Yet their meetings continued to focus on the day-to-day numbers,
operational processes, and immediate crises.

Unfortunately, this scenario is common for many leadership teams — when facing immediate concerns, it’s difficult to remain
strategic. Senior executives need to balance the long- and short-term demands of their businesses, and meetings need to mirror this
balance. But they rarely do when executives don’t realize the pitfalls of meetings that conflate strategy and operations.

One of the most common pitfalls that leads executives to ignore key topics of conversation is the hesitation to discuss topics outside
their area of expertise. When individuals join a senior leadership team, they are often exposed to topics they’re unfamiliar with. For
example, Mauricio started as an engineer in his manufacturing firm, moved up the ranks, and 10 years later was promoted to
president of European operations. In his decade with the company, he had gained expertise in the engineering side of the company,
but he wasn’t as confident of his grasp of financial data or some of the broader aspects of the business. He was hesitant to speak up
on these matters in strategic meetings, and kept to what he was most comfortable with — operational matters.

YOU AND YOUR TEAM SERIES Leaders also like to solve problems and check them off, and short-
Meetings term items provide us with visible ways to mark progress. We feel
as if we’ve accomplished something. Even though executives are
supposed to delegate solvable problems to their direct reports,
walking away from a concrete, short-term issue is as hard as
 driving past an accident without rubbernecking. Encountering
such a topic is one of the most common causes of postponing the
strategic agenda.

Finally, executives sometimes treat a strategic discussion the way

they would a short-term issue. Instead of using a meeting just to
brainstorm and expand on ideas, for example, they may grab the
first idea that seems viable and solve for it, therefore missing
critical data and the opportunity to view the problem from

How Top Salespeople Land Hard-to-Get Meetings multiple angles first. On the one occasion that Mauricio’s chief of
by Stu Heinecke staff raised a strategic topic, the team asked rapid-fire, data-
5 Ways Meetings Get Off Track, and How to Prevent Each One gathering questions locking onto a path forward within 20
by Roger Schwarz
minutes. Three months later they realized they had missed a key
Run Meetings That Are Fair to Introverts, Women, and
Remote Workers piece of information by not taking more time to expand their
by Renee Cullinan perspective: the rising volume of customer complaints about their
new product line.

Fortunately, there are ways you can avoid these traps as you plan your own strategic meeting. Consider the following tips:

Design a learning environment. People will be much less likely to derail a strategic conversation if they feel more confident in their
own ability to participate. When Mauricio realized he had to have more strategic conversations with his leadership team, he started
with a series of learning sessions. These sessions preceded the strategic meetings and served to educate his team and get everyone
on the same page first. Mauricio invited people from other departments and even outside the company as guest speakers
— customers, experts in particular domains, and proactive thinkers — so his leadership team could learn together and expand their
perspectives. This leveled the playing field, gave everyone permission to ask questions in the spirit of learning, and created common
frameworks and words through a shared experience.

Detach operational meetings from strategic ones. When you blend short-term and long-term agenda items into one meeting, the
short term will almost always win. You’ll convince yourself (and sometimes you may even be right) that the short-term problem
must be dealt with right away. Schedule separate meetings for operational and strategic topics. As in Mauricio’s case, sometimes
focusing on the long term can fix a problem before it even occurs, or help you better solve short-term issues.

Explore strategic issues from multiple angles. Issues that need to be addressed over the long term benefit from exploration before
solution. Before jumping in to solve strategic issues, explore them from multiple angles. When executive teams do this, they are
often surprised by how differently each person on the team has interpreted the challenge they face. These strategic topics benefit
from divergence before convergence.

For example, when a multinational high-tech company wanted to discuss where it should open its next software development
center, the executive team quickly realized that this wasn’t a 30-minute agenda item, even though the CEO had thought that most
people were on the same page. Instead, they took three meetings to better understand the data, discuss various points of view, and
project the downstream effect of each.

Deliberately look for approaches to generate the right dialogue that are different from short-term problem solving. This might
involve using different brainstorming techniques where no initial idea is a bad idea; channeling other constituents’ thoughts, such
as your worst critics and competitors; or creating a process for dialogue that involves a slower, more deliberate, and evenly
participative methodology.
Declare your intention and go. Finally, if you’re serious about shifting the conversation from the mundane to the strategic, declare
your intention explicitly at the start of your meeting, and hold people to it. As the most senior leader, it’s your job to kickstart the
discussion and keep it on track.

Day-to-day issues eat strategy for breakfast. Fortify your intentions to operate strategically by understanding the common
temptations that will veer you off course and by applying the appropriate antidote.

Sabina Nawaz is a global CEO coach, leadership keynote speaker, and writer working in over 26 countries. She advises C-level
executives in Fortune 500 corporations, government agencies, non-prots, and academic organizations. Sabina has spoken at hundreds of
seminars, events, and conferences including TEDx and has written for FastCompany.com, Inc.com, and Forbes.com, in addition to HBR.org.
Follow her on Twitter.

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