A horse race is telling you that planning in quarters makes no sense. Try this alternative.

Every year on the Melbourne Cup public holiday in early November, I begin reflecting on how the year at work has gone and what needs to happen before the summer break. It’s peculiar because the impending arrival of a new calendar year rarely changes the actual progress or importance of our work.

Yet our perception drives odd behaviour on that Wednesday morning after Cup Day. Many teams log in with a sense of urgency, while others begin enjoying long lunches and have team members begin their well-earned holidays.

Unfortunately, even the most self-sufficient of agile teams generally require the assistance of expertise that sits in the rest of the organisation. ?

Be it legal review of those new product T&Cs or the back-end data structure enhancement that enables that new capability, there is a level of orchestration that begins breaking down as the summer holiday period approaches.

Your company has its own circadian rhythm and that’s why progress inevitably slows.

But we aligned at the QBR!

Anyone who has ever heard of KPIs, half year results and full year results understands what it’s like to work in an environment where leadership teams are perpetually involved in multi-week and month-long planning, “alignment” and review processes.

The metronome-like regularity of these processes often sees delivery teams trying to stretch for short term company performance (think sales to hit half year targets) while simultaneously facing a deadline for a long-term strategic project.

Naturally the long-term growth project gets interrupted, at best, or fundamentally compromised as resources get diverted to near term company performance.

To try and bridge this gap, Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) and Quarterly Business Reviews (QBRs) have been introduced by “agile at scale” organisations.

You can read more about McKinsey’s take on the QBR here, but I suggest you don’t because in practice, they rarely resolve either of the orchestration or competing priorities problems just discussed.

Your company has a circadian rhythm. Work with it, not against it.

A circadian rhythm? When looking closely at the ebbs and flows of the Australian working calendar I think that the year would be better broken down into three blocks of four months. Here’s my take.

Summer Season - November to February

The summer season runs from November to February and is full of those earlier described orchestration interruptions. Despite this, we push our teams to get projects out the door, but very few are successful.

An alternative would be to use this summer season to reflect, ideate and plan for the coming 12 months. ?What are the big ideas you want to have a crack at? What processes and methodologies do you want to change? Make sure to spend time reconnecting and getting to know each other.

Every team will have a different configuration and mood during this season, so avoiding the orchestration problem and only accommodating your own team’s needs is the best way to get the most out of this season.

The run home - March to June

Next up is, the run home, which runs from March to June. Australia Day has come and gone, everyone has found their footing throughout February and suddenly senior leadership is calling for short-term tactics that will increase sales for June 30.?

Many of those important and unfinished projects from the end of the previous year have been deprioritised to make way for these tactics. IT teams get redirected to building the new product codes, discounts and reports that help sales and marketing teams do what they do best.

Despite this, many project teams continue to fight for scarce resources and management attention. It becomes a Sisyphean existence, and the worst damage occurs here. Those people who have put blood, sweat and tears into creating something new begin to lose enthusiasm. These new products and projects grind to halt and rarely get their mojo back.

To avoid this, project teams during the run home should be pulling on the same rope and helping the organisation achieve its June 30 goals. They should still be testing, learning and planning for delivery, but not delivering… yet.

Clean air - July to October

The four months between July and October is where senior leadership needs to do its best work. In the absence of pressing external deadlines and no complicated orchestration, leadership must now create clean air for its project, product and innovation teams. This is the time to deliver on needle movers.

Whatever it takes to get that new product to market and in the hands of customers, the answer needs to be yes. From a new marketing campaign through to legal sign off, it has to happen now.

During this time, senior leaders should be rolling up their sleeves getting amongst it. They can trust that their sales, finance and operations teams can keep the ship pointed in the right direction while leaders focus on the teams that are the creators of green shoots and long-term growth.

Organisational rules can help

Making the shift to three clearly distinct seasons can be difficult from a practical perspective. To make it easier, leadership should develop organisational rules promote and block certain types of behaviour at different times of the year.

In many cases, you may already be doing some of them. One example I often share with clients is the summer network embargo at mobile network operators. It’s a rule that prevents non-critical changes to network software and hardware. It acknowledges that a network outage at this time of year could have massive impact on customer perception and that engineering teams that can respond to any issues are staffed much lower.

The unintended consequence of this is that new projects and products that interact with the mobile network must all be completed by the close of what I call clean air.

TL;DR – Too Long Didn’t Read

• Almost all companies plan in halves and quarters due to financial reporting requirements.
• Effective delivery of organisational short and long-term goals would be better served by planning and working in four month blocks that line up with:

Summer Season - November to February

The run home – March to June

Clean air – July to October

• Organisation-wide rules can promote behaviours that support the seasonal approach.