Brian Moran | The 12 Week Year Management System

Step 1: Reframe the mindset and set your vision.

• Get rid of the annual environment.
  • The mindset of having 12 long months to catch up with goals holds the business back.
  • The annual environment allows people to put things off and procrastinate.
  • During the last months of the year, it puts a lot of pressure on your team members because there’s a lot to catch up on.

• Have a mindset of a 12-week year system.
  • Reframe how you think about time and how you deal with a year.
  • This mindset allows you to be more productive as it allows you to measure every success and failure one little step at a time.

• It imposes a greater sense of urgency and consistency in your organisation.
• Determine your long-term vision.
  • Start from your team members and your own personal vision, and not from your business vision as this provides motivation.

• Once you’re done identifying your personal visions, start determining your organisation vision.
  • Make sure they’re aligned.

• As you go, the system will tell you if you have set the right and aligned vision.
  • You’re always free to adjust.
  • Your vision will eventually change as your business grow.

• Examine your personal standpoints.
  • What really matters to you?
  • What are the things you do that makes your life exciting?
  • What do you want to have in life (both material and non-material things)?

• Set your personal vision five to ten years in the future.
  • Don’t forget to set your short-term goals at around 36 months out.
  • The goal is to align what will happen during your 12-week year plan with your long-term goals.
  • Revisit your long-term vision from time to time to check if you’re on the same standing.

• Hold your visions lightly.
• Get something on paper to start with.
• Get as outrageous as you can when setting your long-term vision. Then, the near-term goals will present you with the realities with which you can align your visions.

Step 2: Start planning.

• Bear in mind that 12-week planning greatly differs from your usual annual planning.
  • It is more focused and specific.
  • It increases the predictability of things, so you have room to be more focused.
  • It lets you know that you have a limited capacity.

• Start a tactical plan and stray away from inexecutable concepts.
  • Be more specific on what your team members should accomplish.
  • It brings out clarity and transparency of what is expected of each team member.

• You’ll notice the difference in planning for a 12-week year once you start executing the plan.
• Help your team members understand that the plan has two levels.
  • Outcomes – these should reflect your goals and you don’t control them entirely.
  • Actions – these are your tactics that are aligned with your goals. People have control over their actions.

• Start to weigh out your actions and options and pick the best you think will produce the best results.
• Have your plans specify actions that your team members could take.
• When planning, carefully consider if you’re planning as a team and the size of your team.
• Limit your goals to three – anything more than that will stretch yourself really thin.

Step 3: Process control.

• The tools that help you execute your plan.
• These are the things you can insert into your organisation’s environment which your team members could lean on.
• Take your 12-week plan and break it down into a weekly plan.
  • This helps you know what matters most for each individual on a weekly basis.

• To be able to have a high-performance culture, there are three structures you need to have which comes built-in from the 12-week year system.
  • Clarity.
    • Clarity of vision.
    • Clarity of goals.
    • Clarity of actions around expectations.

• • Transparency.
    • Are you seeing what’s getting done? Who’s doing it? AND who’s not doing it?

• • Evidence.
    • Is it producing?

• What’s good with the system is that it’ll inform you of the corrective actions you should take sooner.

Step 4: Score-keeping.

• Similar to lead and lag indicators that scores your execution.
• Determine 4 or 5 things that really matters so you can keep focused.
• One of the most useful lead and lag indicators is the measure of your execution.
  • Track your outcomes through the lead and lags.
  • Score the execution from there.

• Establish a weekly personal execution score.
  • Out of the things you’ve planned, what percentage got done?
  • Are you doing what you’re expected to do?
  • Is it producing the results you want?

• You don’t have to alter the entire plan even if you’ve noticed that you are not producing.
  • Either there’s really something wrong with your plan but it is most likely because you’re not doing enough effort with the execution.

• As long as you’ve accomplished 80% or higher on a weekly basis, you’ll accomplish your 12-week goals.
• If you’re not meeting at least 80% of your goal, do not adjust your plan immediately. Instead, work on ways on how you can execute your plan.

Step 5: Usage of time.

• Everything happens in the context of time. If you’re not in control of your time, you won’t have a chance to control your results.
• The first thing you need to know to be effective with your time is the things you want.
  • This goes back to the vision part of the system.

• The second thing to know is what matters most?
  • This goes back to your planning question

• The third thing to be aware of is if you’re doing your plans or not.
  • This signifies the execution question.

• The last thing to pay attention to is if you’re producing.
  • This piece belongs to the measuring step.

• There is sequencing to these disciplines which makes you be effective with your time.
• These things are the stuff that really matters. Pay close attention to them and make sure you have clear answers to them.

System Notes

• When trying to be effective with your time, learn that you can’t say yes to everything.
  • We have to say no to certain things.

• Focus on the things that really matter.
• You might lose some of your team members along the way because they don’t like the idea of transparency and clarity this system has to offer.
  • The system basically exposes the people who aren’t fully committed to your business or who are not producing results.

• As you loop around the system processes, you’ll know that it pushes you to self-correct.
• Note that there isn’t a perfect plan. It is all about taking your best plan and go out to test it.
  • Succeed or fail as fast as you can.
  • With the 12-week year system, you can quickly come back up to tighten them up and fix things.

• It’s really about making smaller adjustments more frequently.
• Meeting frequencies and structures.
  • Make the 13th week a day to celebrate.
  • This is also the best time to identify which things worked and which things did not.