A business performance review can spend an hour discussing why a target was missed and still produce very little management value.
Throughout my career, I have participated in and led many different types of business performance and strategy execution reviews. One lesson has remained consistent: understanding the gap matters, but management value comes from turning that understanding into decisions and action.
We have all seen reviews where most of the discussion is spent explaining the variance:
- Sales were below target because market conditions changed.
- A project was delayed because another function did not deliver.
- Costs increased because of an unexpected requirement.
- A KPI was missed because the original assumptions changed.
Some of those explanations may be completely valid.
But a valid explanation is not yet a management response.
A strong business performance review should move the conversation from understanding the variance to deciding the management response:
