Sherpa Alliance

Month Two of our Fiscal Year (February for many of us) is a time for a Quarterly Traction Review.

i)  Team-Based Review of the Traction Plan.

• Typically a half-day session of the executive team
• Champions to present their boxes/pages of the Traction Plan for which they are responsible
• Everyone will want to be impressed with their progress and pride-of-ownership of thie boxes/pages.

ii) Reviewing the Strategic Productivity which is being achieved

iii) Reviewing the Accountability for Long-Range Culture which is being achieved.

Here are some things-to-think-about, questions-to-ponder, decisions-to-make and actions-to-take.

Things-to-Think-About

• Think about the top page of your Traction Plan and its scope, in terms of breadth and depth of boxes, to handle the detail complexity and dynamic complexity challenge of your business and its evolution
• Think about the degree to which the shape of the top page of the Traction Plan reflects the latest shape of your challenge, for the next phase of your journey as a business, and the triage reflected in the coloring (urgency) and bolding (importance) for finding a path to architect the breakthrough journey you desire.
• Think about the role model leadership you are exhibiting (or are not) regarding the Traction Plan and your commitment to the ongoing process/discipline required and where you want to set the bar in this next session.

Questions-to-Ponder

• How has the latest shape of you challenge changed and how does the Traction Plan need to be reshaped to reflect it, hand-in-glove, and how has the landscape shifted to the degree that we need to be finding a new path and re-triaging the Traction Plan accordingly? 
• How well are we doing overall in creating traction, where do we have traction and where do we have wheelspin?
• How does this wheelspin relate to a lack of strategic productivity and accountability, for progressing long-range/strategic initiatives, with some champions, individually and/or collectively?

Decisions-to-Make

• Decide how to handle accountability/commitment issues with champions and/or other members of your team who are not pulling their weight/doing the heavy lifting you expect from everyone. 
• Decide which boxes/pages you want to do in depth reviews/discussions of in the Quarterly Traction Review, in addition to the overall review of the whole Traction Plan.  
• Decide where and how you will set the bar in this next session, through both your leadership voice and with your role model leadership on those boxes/pages you are championing and/or task-teams/working groups you are involved with in support of other champions/boxes/pages.

Actions-to-Take

• Ensure that a clear deadline is set for getting Traction Plan submissions into the master document, setting the expectation that failure is not an option (and will be fully evident to all in the  Quarterly Review Session leveraging the principles of Namesless, Rankless Debriefs and pulling no punches) 
• Prepare and deliver your leadership voice and role model leadership, reinforcing your commitment to the ongoing process/cycle and discipline, and expectations of each executive, individually and collectively.
• Drive conversation, dialog and synchronization, capturing the most significant elements visually/electronically in the Traction Plan real-time, so it can be distributed back out to the team immediately after the session.  

When you are working on your organizational agility, progressively there isn’t a fight you can’t win.