The main reason things go wrong is lack of management attention. Hence the importance of Executive Review Meetings! However, management reviews can also go wrong. Here are eight common reasons why they often do:
# 8. The leaders did not prepare, so the meeting becomes the preparation and the review never materializes.
# 7. Too much time spent on history, story telling, and showboating. It is up to the leaders to be sure that whatever is really important gets covered.
# 6. The leaders talk right up to the end of the meeting and never created a space for the reviewers to ask questions, clarify, challenge, and then offer their best thinking.
# 5. Top management fails to create a safe environment thus turning the review into a sham (a.k.a. dog-and-pony show).
# 4. Management fails to really pay attention to see what needs to be seen and to deal with what needs to be dealt with rather than seeing what they want or hope to see.
# 3. Management fails to generalize what is learned to incorporate and reuse elsewhere
# 2. Management discovers during the review that things are in much worse shape than expected and, without intention, makes the management team feel inept by piling on and trying to help too much in the moment.
# 1. The number one reason why these meetings don’t go well is that the most important reviewers fail to show up due to last minute crises or they show up physically but not mentally.
Many organizations embrace the need for their leaders to convene offsite, for a day or two, in order to advance their ability to achieve a desired future state and to improve group performance by crystallizing and preparing to launch one or more Strategic Initiative. The best organizations know that to achieve optimum results such a session is best hosted by a trained outside facilitator and that pre-meeting data collection and preparation are key to success.