How to run a quarterly planning session with a client

If the annual planning session sets the direction, the quarterly session is where coaching earns its fee or quietly loses it. It's the moment a leadership team has to admit what actually happened, decide what's in the way now, and change course if it needs to. Done well, it's the most useful three hours of the quarter. Done badly, it's a long status meeting with better biscuits.

Most quarterly sessions I've seen drift towards the second. Each leader presents what their department did, the coach asks good questions about each update, and by the time everyone has reported there's an hour left to decide anything. The team leaves with a list of "priorities" that's longer than the one they came in with.

This guide is how I'd run a quarterly planning session with a client's leadership team so it ends in decisions. It follows on from How to run an annual planning session for a client, and uses the same idea: one goal, the constraints holding it back in an agreed order, and moves only against the top one or two.

What a quarterly session is for

A quarterly planning session has one main job: to re-order what's in the way. Everything else serves that.

At the start of the year, the leadership team agreed a goal and the constraints holding it back. Three months later, some of those constraints have cleared. Some are stuck. New ones have appeared that nobody saw coming. The order the team agreed in January is almost certainly wrong by April, and every week the team works to the old order is a week of effort in the wrong place.

So the session needs to answer three questions, in this order. Is the goal still right? What's in the way of it now, and in what order? What are we going to do about the top one? If the team leaves with clear answers to those three, the session worked, however short it was.

Before the session: kill the status update

The single change that makes the most difference is moving updates out of the room. A few days before the session, every leader should be able to read where the goal stands, what moved against each constraint, what didn't and what needs a decision. Keep it to a page or two. If the team already keeps its plan somewhere current, the pre-read is mostly written for you.

Then agree the rule that goes with it: everyone reads it before they come in, and nobody presents their update in the session. You, as the coach, read it too, and come in with a view on where the real conversation is. That's the subject of How to prepare for a business coaching session.

How to run each part

Is it still the right goal? (20 minutes)

Start with the goal, said in one line by whoever owns it. Where does it stand? Has anything changed in the market, the team or the money that means it should change? Most quarters the honest answer is "keep it", and that's a good outcome; a goal that changes every quarter isn't a goal. But ask properly, because the cost of chasing the wrong goal for another three months is far higher than the cost of twenty minutes' discussion.

What cleared, and what didn't (40 minutes)

Go through the constraints in the order the team agreed last time. For each one, ask for evidence, not opinion. "We think it's going well" isn't evidence. "Qualified leads are up from 12 to 30 a month and the sales team is using the same scoring" is. When a constraint is stuck, ask why, and keep asking until you reach something the team can change.

This is the part where coaches add the most value, because a leadership team on its own will usually be too kind to itself. Your job is to hold the line between "we did a lot of work on it" and "it cleared".

Re-order what's in the way (60 minutes)

The heart of the session. Has a new constraint appeared? Has something lower down become the real block? Should the order change? Give this the most time, because it's the decision that decides where the leadership team's effort goes for the next quarter.

A useful question when the team can't agree: "If we could only clear one of these by the next session, which one would make the most difference to the goal?" It forces a choice, and the debate it starts is usually the most useful conversation of the day. For more on finding real constraints, see Remove constraints, don't add initiatives.

Plan the next moves (50 minutes)

For the new top constraint, choose the moves most likely to clear it. Each move gets one owner and a date. Then look at the moves still open under constraints that have dropped down the list, and pause or drop the ones that no longer matter. Stopping work is as important as starting it, and most teams never do it.

Commit and close (10 minutes)

Go round once. Each leader says what they own for the next few weeks. Agree when the team will look at the order again, which should be well before the next quarterly session, and put the next session in the diary before anyone leaves.

Five facilitation habits that help

• Write decisions down where everyone can see them, as they happen. Not in your notes. The team should leave with the decisions already recorded.
• Separate "we worked on it" from "it cleared". Activity isn't progress. Ask for the evidence.
• Protect the re-ordering time. If the review runs over, cut the review, not the decision.
• Make stopping work explicit. Ask "what are we going to stop?" as often as "what are we going to start?".
• Get the quiet leaders' view first. Ask the people who haven't spoken before the founder gives their opinion, or the founder's view becomes the team's.

Why you shouldn't wait for the quarter

Quarterly planning is useful, but it can become a trap. If the only time a leadership team changes its priorities is at the quarterly session, then a constraint that clears in week three leaves the team working on the wrong thing for ten weeks. That's a lot of wasted effort in a company growing quickly.

The best teams I've seen look at the order of their constraints every week or two, and use the quarterly session for the bigger questions: is the goal still right, has the shape of the problem changed, are we working on the right things at all. That's the argument behind A loop, not a plan. As a coach, it's also an argument for a lighter touch between sessions, which is the subject of How to keep coaching clients accountable between sessions.

How this compares with EOS and Scaling Up

If your clients run EOS, their quarterly session is the Quarterly Pulsing meeting: review the last quarter's Rocks, set new Rocks for the next 90 days, and work through the Issues List. Scaling Up has a similar quarterly rhythm built around its One-Page Strategic Plan and quarterly priorities. Both are well tested and both give a team real focus.

Where I'd differ is in the number of things set each quarter and the time spent reviewing them. EOS typically produces three to seven Rocks per leader, which across a leadership team of six can mean thirty-odd priorities. The approach here keeps one goal and plans moves only against the top constraint or two, so the whole team pulls on the same few things. If you're weighing up a licensed system for your own practice, I've written about that in Business coach or EOS Implementer?

Running quarterly sessions with Clearahead

Clearahead keeps a client's goal, the constraints holding it back in the order the team agreed, and the moves under each one, each with an owner. The team updates AJ in a sentence when work moves, and AJ files what they say as evidence on the right constraint. By the time you sit down for the quarterly session, the review is already done: you can see which constraints cleared, what the evidence was and what's been stuck.

In the session itself, the team puts the constraints in their new order, opens the top one and uses Plan moves to choose what to do next. Moves under constraints that have dropped down the list can be marked as dropped, so everyone can see they've stopped. Because the plan is the same one the team works from all quarter, nothing has to be written up afterwards.

You join each client's organisation free, as a Viewer or a Contributor, and switch between clients from one login. See Clearahead for coaches and advisers, or take the partner kit for a session agenda and a note to send your client.

Questions coaches ask

How do you run a quarterly planning session with a client?

Send a pre-read so nobody reports status in the room, then spend a half day on five things: checking the goal is still right, reviewing which constraints cleared and which are stuck, re-ordering what’s in the way, planning the next moves against the new top constraint, and getting each leader to commit to what they own. The re-ordering is the decision the session exists to make.

How long should a quarterly planning session be?

Half a day, about three hours, is enough for most leadership teams of four to eight people if the updates are shared beforehand. Teams that read updates aloud in the room usually need a full day, and spend most of it on information rather than decisions.

What is the difference between annual and quarterly planning?

Annual planning sets the goal and the first order of what’s in the way. Quarterly planning keeps the goal unless the world has changed, checks what cleared, and re-orders the constraints for the next stretch. Annual is about direction; quarterly is about course correction.

What should be on a quarterly planning agenda?

The goal and whether it still holds, a review of each constraint in order with evidence of what moved, a fresh agreement on the order of the constraints, the next moves for the top one with owners and dates, and each leader’s commitments. Leave out anything that is only an update; it belongs in the pre-read.

Do you have to wait 90 days to change priorities?

No. A quarter is a useful time to step back, but a constraint that clears in week three should be replaced in week three. The best leadership teams look at the order of their constraints every week or two and use the quarterly session for the bigger questions.

How do quarterly sessions differ from EOS Quarterly Pulsing?

In EOS, the quarterly session reviews the last quarter’s Rocks and sets new ones, usually three to seven per person, for the next 90 days. The approach here keeps one goal and re-orders the constraints holding it back, planning moves only for the top one or two, so the team focuses on fewer things and changes course as soon as something clears.