It’s Advance Season

I know that I have said this before, but fall is really my favorite time of year. Yes, it means football, tailgating, sweater weather, the smell of burning leaves, holiday traditions, and pumpkin spiced everything. Most of all though, it means it’s time for our Advance.

Our Advance is the most important part of our annual strategic planning process. Over three days every October, we bring our entire Executive Leadership Team together for a focused discussion about where we are, where we are headed, and what will matter most in the year ahead. The time together provides an important opportunity to step back from day-to-day priorities, assess the changing needs of our clients, and ensure that we remain on course to achieve our longer-term strategy to Serve Clients More.

Discussions at the Advance will center on the forces shaping our business and the people we serve, including evolving client expectations, talent development, technology, operational excellence, and opportunities for purposeful growth. Divisional leaders will challenge each other to find ways we can build upon our distinctive client experience while investing thoughtfully in the capabilities our team uses to serve them.

They challenge each other by applying Socratic discourse to each of their divisional plans that were created using their respective team’s insights. The Socratic Method of discussion is a form of cooperative argumentative dialogue involving probing questions to stimulate critical thinking and test ideas within the plans. Divisional plans are also filtered through our long-term Serve Clients More strategy in an effort to create a cohesive organizational plan for the upcoming year. Candor and trusting relationships are essential to the success of this process.

The goal of the Advance is not simply to produce a plan for the year ahead, but to establish a shared set of priorities that can guide decisions and actions throughout the organization. Coming out of the Advance, we begin construction of our budget. Then in November, the entire organization is brought together in Kalamazoo for our annual Strategic Planning meeting. At the meeting, the plan developed in the Advance is communicated so that every team member understands how each key initiative in the plan connects to their work and to the experience we create for clients.

Ultimately, the success of the Advance will not be measured by the plan we produce, but by the clarity, alignment, and action that follows. When each of us understands our priorities and how our work contributes to them, strategy becomes more than a document – it becomes the way we serve our clients and one another. I am grateful for the candor, insight, and commitment our team brings to this process, and I am confident that the work we do together this fall will position us for a strong year ahead.

After all, we call it an Advance – not a retreat – because our plan is to move forward, not backward.