How do you find the positive when your results aren’t great for an annual business review?

Anonymous

January 6,2024 at 2:33PM UTC

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How do you find the positive when your results aren’t great for an annual business review? We as a business had some abysmal results. We did not hit our goals and I have been warned that most of the questions will be pointed at my team, the marketing team. While we hold the budget we are not fully responsible for meeting these goals alone. I have never been good at finding the positives when I feel like results weren’t where I need them to be (something my managers had always done a great job of for me when I was an individual contributor ). Now that I manage a team I need to be better at this because they are an amazing team and deserve credit for working so hard, while also realizing where we can do better. I feel like only hearing the negative or not showing a balance between the neg/pos would be not only bad for my teams morale, but also seen as me agreeing with the only negative commentary or not defending my team.

I have the results, I have notes on what we will do better on and where I think we need more support from other teams, but I think I should be looking for more positives within the past year versus just what we will do differently moving forward.

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AnonymousJanuary 6,2024 at 2:50PM UTC
First, take a deep breath and think through this.
There should be some positives. Highlight where goals for your team were met. Give support and credit to ICs who made significant contributions. When presenting areas with negative outcomes, include a plan to turn them around or at least fill the gap. Include a plan for supporting other departments (sales, for example) to be more successful. If the projected income was the problem in the marketing strategy, or was it an overly ambitious projection?
Above all, try not to point fingers at an individual or group, especially if the economy was your most significant contributing factor in the shortfalls.
AnonymousJanuary 6,2024 at 7:51PM UTC
Please consider creating smart goals and achievable business metrics, and then logging your wins throughout the year so you’re not scrambling to pull out a few nuggets after the fact to validate year-end business reviews.
AnonymousJanuary 6,2024 at 8:31PM UTC
I think that you should give an honest, balanced presentation that:
*Candidly acknowledges what didn’t work *and why.* As noted elsewhere on this thread, use data on business results versus plan to support your presentation.
*Presents plans for 2024 and discusses why you believe they will be effective/overcome the problems encountered in 2023.
*Describes how you will implement your 2024 plans and how you will leverage the strengths of your team to achieve your goals.
*Identifies the support that you will need from other teams.
What I’d avoid: giving your team credit for hard work, unless you can cite specifics as to how this will improve performance in the future.
One question for you: Are the disappointing 2023 results solely the result of poor marketing, or are there other factors at play, such as product deficiencies, new competition, pricing or shifts in consumer demand?