Organizations clinging to conventional business review practices are finding themselves at an increasing competitive disadvantage. Drawing from our ongoing interactions with more than 100 enterprises, we've found that while business reviews should serve as vital strategic steering instruments, they often create measurable disadvantages in market responsiveness and strategic execution.
Many of the most successful companies aren't winning because they have better strategies, but because they have more adaptive operating models and because they have reimagined how they monitor and continuously develop strategy execution. While their competitors are still compiling polished PowerPoint decks for isolated annual reviews and selected show events, these leaders have solved three critical challenges that typically prevent organizations from responding faster to market changes:
- Poor Data Quality and Accessibility
- Discussions about Activity Outputs (not Outcomes) Without Consequences
- Infrequency of Business Reviews
1. Poor Data Quality and Accessibility
Many organizations spend days and weeks preparing for business review meetings. A survey of ours revealed that some start as early as six weeks ahead of the meeting, well-aware of their need to manually collect and aggregate all the necessary data from various stakeholders.
The majority of the people asked (42%) start preparing for business reviews a week in advance. But as many also prepare three weeks or more in advance. (Source: webinar survey among 85 managers)
The hidden cost of poor data quality (and management) becomes evident in the experience of a global energy provider: “We spend days and weeks preparing our QBRs […]. We never get anything in the same format or quality, we have to collect and merge dozens of Excels and PPTs, and we burn through a lot of our own time […] to prepare,” their Head of Transformation Office reports. “Once we have everything compiled, many numbers are already outdated due to the lengthy process.”
As you can imagine, this is a downward spiralling process:
→ Outdated data lowers the level of trust.
→ The increasing amount of effort needed to compile (current) data leads to a lower frequency of reviews.
→ Thereby, decisions are made hesitantly and often too late regarding market changes.
However, there is proof that companies can stop this negative trend by incorporating important changes to their business review system.
To increase the speed and value of business reviews, organizations could:
- Decrease top-down directives for detailed reporting and instead encourage proactive bottom-up flagging of issues as soon as they arise. The best case would be in combination with a productive culture of solving challenges as a team, not one focused on individuals.
- Create a standardized, collaborative reporting format, as well as define clear timelines and responsibilities for the different tasks involved.
- Set up continuously and automatically updated dashboards from integrated data sources across the organization and compile different insights in simple summaries for different stakeholders. Include leading metrics and indicators that help anticipate developments (instead of lagging metrics that only report past performance.)
With these changes implemented, a global logistics leader reported significant improvements including a 70% reduction in preparation time and noticeably faster decision cycles, with pivots in strategy execution done in days rather than months.
And a large automotive supplier saved €25M by stopping an initiative the team was struggling with early on. This decision would have been delayed by another three months had they not optimized their business review processes.
The way our teams at Workpath implement new operating models for better execution builds on this experience as well as our research in the space. Establishing a unified reporting layer is essential for bringing a new operating model to life. Ideally, it is based both on native integrations into relevant processes and data sources along the impact chain (input, output, outcome, impact) and on simple real-time overviews for different stakeholder groups. With our new group of AI agents, the planning, aligning, monitoring and course-correcting of initiatives further accelerates and drives more impact.
The Ideal Time for Business Reviews
Our research indicates that Business Reviews should best be done two to three weeks after the previous cycle ended. This allows for detailed documentation, communication, and preparation.
2. Discussions about Activity Outputs (not Outcomes) Without Consequences
When we join our customer’s business review meetings, we regularly see lengthy presentations on activities, but little to none insights into the actual outcome and value of all the workstreams and initiatives that are being presented
Presenting Only Output
This emphasis leads to bad decision-making, and it doesn’t contribute to growth. It limits the review to evaluating initiative efficiency (Have they been completed within budget?) rather than the actual effectiveness (Have they created any value for the customer or the business?). By only discussing activities and output instead of the actual outcomes of an investment, the chain to (business) impact is broken. Hence, there is no productive feedback loop that leads to challenging discussions and necessary course-corrections early enough.
Ultimately, you want managers with a budget to explain what the outcomes of their invested resources currently are, where they stand in regard to contributing to business targets, and what risks they see going forward. What sounds like common sense is not yet given or even asked for in many corporate business reviews.
To minimize this risk, it is important to plan for and to monitor outcomes—which starts with setting outcome-oriented goals. In this context, the rise of Artificial Intelligence with the respective AI-based coaches and agents has opened a new chapter for scalable governance and quality management in organizational planning. Over the last two years, our team at Workpath has launched multiple capabilities for large corporations to make consistent, outcome-oriented and connected planning simple at scale.
Example of Workpath’s AI-based quality feedback for a team’s goal setting
Regarding the actual business review meeting, Workpath founder and CEO Johannes Müller suggests that companies “follow an agenda that ensures initiatives are only discussed as part of root cause analysis if important outcomes are at risk”. He regards this level of detail as relevant to understand where execution falls short. He also emphasizes the need to connect outcomes (on a customer level) to business impact, and to work with integrated impact chains in planning and reviewing execution. Only then can business reviews unleash their real potential and are worth the time invested.
Avoiding Conflict
A second layer to this issue is the lack of consequences. “Too often [participants] shy away from critical topics that need to be resolved [such as] disagreements between teams, blocking dependencies, budget, and goal conflicts”, a major airline’s Global VP of Strategy says. But having these discussions is crucial to conduct business review meetings with clarity, meaningful decision-making and a specific action plan.
We recommend starting review meetings with follow-ups and open topics from the previous sessions, to tie off any loose ends before opening the discussion about new topics. Moreover, Business reviews should focus on the issues at hand, not on personal performance (there are different conversations for that). The higher the frequency and transparency of the review meetings cycle, the easier it is to develop a culture that nurtures accountability and collaborative problem-solving—enabling leadership teams to be more effective.
3. Infrequency of Business Reviews
We have encountered many reasons for infrequent business reviews, such as:
- The lack of current performance insights due to poor measurement systems.
- The additional effort needed to prepare for more frequent reviews.
- The (assumed) dependency on annual financial planning cycles.
- Cultural aspects like conflict avoidance or fear of failure.
While all of these challenges have merit, they can be solved. Ironically, the less frequently a company conducts business reviews, the lower the return on (time) investment will be and the more tedious the overall process feels to stakeholders.
Uncertainty Calls For Short(er)-term Planning
Reviewing strategic progress and business execution in isolation once a year is an outdated concept from a time when markets did not move as fast as they are doing so today. Holding to this assumption will inevitably lead to a waste of time, resources, and business opportunities.
The continuously rising level of uncertainty from a macroeconomic perspective explains better than anything else why we need shorter planning and review cycles than 15 years ago.
(data source: https://www.policyuncertainty.com/)
Building Efficient and Effective Business Operating Models
Leading organizations, on the contrary, consider their business reviews to be an always-on management process with multiple cycles and frequencies (weekly, monthly, quarterly) for the various stakeholders involved. As we described in another article on the structure of business reviews in our online magazine, it makes perfect sense to differentiate review types (ABRS, QBRs, MBRs) and their specific purpose, as well as choose the participants intentionally.
Synchronizing Different Planning Layers
To unlock execution excellence, synchronize different planning layers such as business targets, budgets, and team initiatives to allow for (more) impromptu course-corrections and a higher overall impact. Watch our webinar recording to learn more about the critical strategy execution skills for 2025 and beyond.
Operating models built this way reduce the effort of preparing and conducting individual sessions significantly—provided that the organization develops the necessary capabilities to operate in a fast-moving environment.
For example, a global Chemicals company we initially met two years ago had developed a new operating model that was built on a quarterly planning and review cycle. But already after the first review cycle, the executive team decided to switch back to a semi-annual cycle. The effort of preparing data and discussing progress in a quarterly rhythm seemed to be too much.
So instead of investing in automation (for better, effortless insights) and developing this organizational capability, the leadership decided to discuss strategic progress and development—which was supposed to drive hundreds of millions in business impact—only twice a year. In a highly dynamic market environment!
It was only after we had piloted a new tech-enabled review cycle to demonstrate the various benefits mentioned so far, that the team switched back to a quarterly cycle.
My colleagues in our consulting team always like to say: “If you want to run faster, your pulse needs to go up.”
Conclusion
Investments into better planning quality and data usually come with a higher level of—or at least potential for—automation. That in turn reduces the preparation effort and increases trust around business reviews, which makes it easier to increase the frequency.
Planning measurable outcomes consistently makes it easier to connect investments (input) with output and business impact, which allows for discussions that are worth having more often.
As you understand now, overcoming these challenges around business reviews creates measurable competitive advantage. Just by increasing the number of reviews per year, organizations can potentially increase their speed of decision-making by 2-4x. Think what this could mean in terms of course corrects, go-to-market strategies, or additionally seized business opportunities.
.jpg)
.png)
