Complete Your Mid-Year Business Review

Schedule the Time

Since going over your business goals is no small task, make sure you have the time to thoroughly go over your progress. If you have a team assigned to establishing and maintaining goals, align your schedules for the best chance to meet.

When creating a team for a mid-year review, consider bringing in representatives from different departments. A smaller business may not have as many divisions as a larger business. If this is your circumstance, bringing in an outside expert who can help your team overcome certain operational challenges may be beneficial. This variety of unique perspectives can provide deeper insight to how to best review your business.

Start With the Positive

Before you begin to critique your business for all the weaknesses and shortfalls, identify the positives. Ask yourself what you're most proud of so far and what some highlights have been. Celebrate the good things about your business so you have good things to remember when you analyze the negative aspects. Start with specific successes. Consider asking each manager to describe an area where they excelled. Encourage them to share what they personally learned throughout the year. Allow them time and space to even brag on their team.

After the manager has shared his or her experience, switch conversation to focus on the bigger picture. Highlight where your business gained loyal clients, where revenue has improved, and where you have decreased expenses. Dig into these highlights. Ask your team why they think these successes took place. Determine the practices that led your business to success. Find out if there is any common thread among successful teams. For instance, see if these departments are being offered more incentives, are more collaborative, or conduct weekly meetings. If data has proven these practices increase success, learn how you can implement these effective strategies within other departments.

Review Your Goals and Progress

At this point in the meeting, analyze your goals against what you've actually accomplished. Review the projects your company completed this year. Consider employee contribution as well as the length of your projects. How is the state of your company culture? Are your team members properly contributing? Are managers properly delegating tasks?

Next, see if your completed company projects are aligned with your business's goals. Compare project results to the standards you set at the beginning of the year. Determine whether or not your current progress is on track to fulfill your business’ goals. If not, then you can identify what is causing your projects to veer off track. Take steps to correct your strategy.

Be sure to remove any unneeded goals that will distract your team. Ineffective goals waste time, energy, and resources. In order to see if current goals are meeting your needs, walk yourself through the following questions posed by Bigger Pockets:

• Are you on course to achieve this goal by the end of the year?
• What has been your progress so far?
• What has been working?
• What has not been working?
• What adjustments need to be made in order to achieve this goal?
• What, in your thinking, do you need to change?
• What, in your behavior/actions do you need to change?
• What resources, people, and outside support can help you?

As a final step, break down your goals and develop a realistic action plan to achieve them. As a team, create a plan of action to enact your new goals. With the hustle and bustle of the workweek, it can be easy to forget everything you wanted to achieve. Decide whether you want to have a monthly or weekly meeting to discuss goal progress. Determine how you will measure development on goals to better track their progress. Remember breaking goals into steps can be less intimidating and can make it easier to track growth.

Identify Areas for Improvement

Now is the time to bring in data and analytics. There are multiple factors of which your business can examine.

Expenses – It is time to ask your team the important question: where can costs be decreased? Gather expense reports and budgets from each department. Work with your accountant to understand these reports. According to Forbes, “most businesses can cut “10 to 20 percent of expenses overnight.” See what these unnecessary expenses consist of in your company. Examples of these expenses may include excessive membership fees, unneeded subscriptions, office parties, lavish travel, or any other expenses of which do not provide return. Look closely at your business' expenses and see what you can reduce. By finding areas to decrease excessive spending, you can accelerate your business’ cash flow.

Employees - To begin, look at employee turnover rates. Find out the average cost of recruiting and making a hire. See where you can revamp your hiring process. Ask your managers where they are struggling to unify and motivate their employees. Compare and contrast their management styles to see if there’s a way to adjust their approach. Find out where your team can improve employee engagement. See how your business can increase employee loyalty. Are there trending benefits your business should consider offering to employees? Learn if your business is attracting the best talent that will benefit the future growth of your business.

End on a Positve

After the grueling experience of tearing your business apart, come back to the positive note you began on. Comment on your biggest takeaways and praise the successes you've had so far. Be aware of the things that you can improve upon and head into the next half of the year with your head held high.