As year end results come into view, after what for many has been a difficult year, results may not have landed where you thought (or hoped) they would. In this newsletter we explore how to prepare for critical conversations with your key stakeholders in a way that establishes accountability, builds trust, and identifies a constructive way forward for the organization.   

• Focus on what you have delivered, rather than what you have done. 

  • Separate the signal from the noise and present concise points that key stakeholders can understand without a great deal of explanation. This could just be a list of achievements and results, even those falling short of plan. It is critical that everyone has the same data and understands the full story of what happened over the last four quarters.

  • Be prepared with concise thoughts as to root causes and appropriate metrics necessary on a forward looking basis, as you will likely be asked “why didn’t you see this sooner?” or “how can we get ahead of this?”.

    
    

• Think very carefully about how the board can help you in your specific moment.

  • Have a clear articulation of what the business needs and how the stakeholders can help you. 

  • Point to examples of where there is opportunity for improvement through better resources, tools, processes.  

  • No one wants to hear “we need more capital”; even if you do.  

    
    

• Keep data in the appendix and focus on progressing the strategy

  • There are stakeholders that will want to walk through each cell of your income statement, but most won’t. Greater importance will be highlighting progress on key strategies. 

  • However, prepare and be ready to delve into unit economics, cash burn, cost of acquisition and other key metrics as they are critical to results. Have materials that support you in explaining the trend of these metrics, and outlook and plans to improve.   

Most importantly, if things have gone wrong and are below plan or expectations, don’t blame circumstances or members of the team. Own the problem and present well thought out solutions - if you don’t have a solution be prepared to articulate the process you are executing to find a solution, the people involved, and timeline for outcome. 

For more on this topic we highly recommend the book “Elevate: How to lift the quality of thinking in your team's board papers without rewriting them yourself” by the Australian author Davina Stanley. 

How we can help 

Scalepoint Advisors has built several tools and processes for helping executive teams through this process. Our experience and library of case studies helps us ask insightful questions and recognize patterns and problems before they become acute, harder to solve emergencies.  Working with management teams to build robust models and scenario analysis drives better strategic decisions and builds confidence with stakeholders, board members, and equity holders. 

Let’s discuss how we can help your company prepare for year end reporting and planning.