Department of inconvenient questions ...How often do you?

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Business today is all about multiple and frequent if not real time measurements of success and the efficient use of human and financial capital.

The business of reporting or indeed staying abreast of key metrics has become a business within a business and a badge of honour in its' own right....knowing your very latest numbers, the numbers talk.. right?


The Department of Inconvenient questions has recently completed the least thorough piece of research review ever into that sensitive area of marketing business called "How often do you spend quality time with your brand and wider business strategy? Do you regularly look at the strategic plan after it is written and hopefully signed off by head office ? How often is it used as a touchpoint to ensure alignment of daily activities? Ironically an enormous amount of time is spent creating strategic plans...which are then often underutilized .

My point is that more time needs to be spent regularly and systematically to stay in touch with and review the big picture strategic direction, as many markets today are subject to more significant and frequent game changing events than at any time in my almost 40 year career...this both in the board rooms, maybe especially in the boardrooms as well as in every brand or business unit.

You could stop here ...... but below is just a selection of typical number based events and frequency one might hypothetically need to navigate as a classical senior marketer:

Daily:sales dashboard, financials, research numbers, social media .

Weekly: sales ,s&op review,listings and customer updates , marketing activity,innovation and new launches project updates. Weekly call with head office

Monthly: sales , brand share and activities reporting, financials vs annual plan, action plans, listings , promotion and new products funnels and post launch tracking , sales forecasting,quality/ industrial reports.

Quarterly:detailed business updates for head office.

Annual: strategic plan followed by detailed budget for n+1 split to sku, month and customer.