Quarterly Business Reviews at LinkedIn: A True Game-Changer

Like most companies, at LinkedIn we try to hold fewer meetings, and maximize the effectiveness of the ones we do have. I’ve written before about how we run our exec meetings, and today I wanted to share more about a specific operating rhythm we have to manage the company. Two years ago, our leadership team introduced Quarterly Business Reviews (QBRs) to help us drive the overall LinkedIn business. While it did introduce a new series of meetings for our senior leaders, the process and outcomes have been transformative. This article aims to cover the impetus for starting QBRs, the benefits of holding the reviews, and best practices for implementing.

Why we started QBRs

Rewinding the clock to a few years ago, our execs led a weekly meeting focused on how our businesses were performing relative to targets. It tended to be more transactional -- the product and engineering teams would share a few bullets on upcoming launches, the sales team would announce key wins, the marketing team would highlight a new campaign, and we’d have a sense for how we were faring for the quarter -- all in all, a handful of minutes spent on each business. Once a year, we’d go deep on our business lines during annual strategy reviews. But in between the weekly and the annual meetings, our exec team didn’t have a more regular review cadence.

From time to time, Leslie Kilgore, a LinkedIn board member, would mention to our CEO Jeff Weiner the value of Quarterly Business Reviews at Netflix, where she was Chief Marketing Officer. Jeff had discussed the idea of QBRs with our CFO, Steve Sordello, but given the upfront investment required to make them useful, wanted to ensure it would be worth the time and effort. Our finance and sales teams had been running their own internal quarterly reviews, so we had an opportunity to consolidate these into a more structured, proactive, and holistic approach to understand business performance, issues, and strategies, in a way that would be unique to LinkedIn and inclusive of the broader exec team.

Introducing QBRs

We introduced the new QBR process in Q1 2015. The leaders of each of our seven business lines had the opportunity to present to the exec team for between one to three hours, over the course of two days. To structure the conversation, each team prepared a narrative document and a financial appendix. The narrative was limited to six pages and included the following sections:

• Recap of each business’s vision to values (for more, please refer to Jeff’s post on the topic)
• Exec summary
• Strategic summary, highlighting any changes to the team’s strategy
• Top priorities for the year, stack-ranked and evaluated each quarter
• Key performance indicators, both results and projections, and including commentary
• Any areas that the team needed help with, e.g., decisions requiring the exec team, competitive dynamics to address, partnership ecosystem opportunities, bottlenecks to surface and resolve

The financial appendix was a separate document that allowed our teams to go deeper into the top- and bottom-line results and projections, drilling in by product lines and geographies. As a data-driven company, we often reviewed this during the meetings to get a better handle on the businesses.

We provided a schedule two months in advance so teams would have plenty of time to assemble the QBR docs, and as with other LinkedIn meetings, teams sent the materials 24-48 hours in advance so the execs could read them before the meeting started.  

To provide context for our senior leaders across functions, we tried something unusual with QBRs. We invited our entire set of Vice Presidents and other key leaders across the company to observe the QBR meetings via video conference from various rooms around the world. This enabled greater awareness for our leaders, who may not have had as much exposure to the businesses, their results, priorities, and strategies. While we made these leaders' attendance completely optional, the vast majority continued to attend, sharing how helpful the meetings were.

The benefits of QBRs

Over the course of the last two years, we’ve seen significant positive impact to holding QBRs. The biggest five benefits, in my opinion, have been:

• Understanding performance and drivers. By getting a solid grasp on the results and projections of each business, we’re able to better focus efforts and resources across the company. It's also a great forum to recognize teams who are "nailing it" and over-performing.
• Determining course-corrections and improvements. During QBRs, the execs have the opportunity to share top-of-mind feedback for each team, providing recommendations for areas to focus on and strategies to employ. By holding these reviews quarterly vs. annually, we can make improvements before it's too late.
• Aligning on priorities across the organization. Given the explicit list of stack-ranked priorities, there’s no confusion about what matters most to each business, and how each of our cross-functional teams can support their priorities. This is invaluable input for quarterly planning purposes.
• Solving challenges in real-time. During QBRs, teams often surface bottlenecks that may have lingered for weeks, or in some cases, months. Because we have all the execs around the table, we're able to resolve seemingly-sticky situations with clear next steps and owners.
• Developing talent. One of the lesser-known benefits to holding QBRs is that it allows the exec team a chance to objectively evaluate not only business performance, but also the key leaders running each business. We end each round of QBRs with an exec team debrief to ensure we have the right people in the right roles.

Best practices for implementing QBRs

During those exec team debriefs, we also discussed how we could make each QBR better, in the spirit of continuous improvement. Here are the most important pieces of advice I give to companies looking to start QBRs, based on our learnings.

• Get exec team alignment on the objectives of QBRs. Before rolling out the process, make sure the key stakeholders understand and agree on the process and goals. QBRs are a material investment of time and energy -- not just for the exec team, but also for the business leads preparing the materials -- so it’s critical that leadership is aligned on the importance and rationale, and clearly communicates that to the rest of the business.
• Stick to six pages. As Thoreau said, “Not that the story need be long, but it will take a long while to make it short.” Teams have a tendency to drift beyond the page limit...and in my experience, the more pages in the document, the less likely it is to be read. This quarter, we’ve committed to teams that we won’t read a single word beyond six pages.
• Start with exec team pre-meetings to surface hot topics. Before the presenting team comes in the room, our exec team does a quick go-around on the most pressing topics that they want to discuss. That helps us proactively steer the conversation and ensure we hit the key areas.
• Pulse-check process with the teams. We regularly solicit and implement feedback from the business leaders and the observers to understand how we can make QBRs better for everyone. For instance, we've made several changes to the template and schedule based on their comments over the years.
• Follow-up on key takeaways. After every round of QBRs, we develop a short summary of the action items and key takeaways, to help our execs manage the business for the quarter ahead and stay focused on the most important priorities.

Quarterly Business Reviews may not be right for every company size, organizational structure, or leadership style. But for LinkedIn, they’ve been a real game-changer for how we run the company. In the comments below, would love to hear what you think about QBRs and how your company ensures alignment on performance, priorities, and strategy.

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Thanks to Jeff Weiner and Steve Sordello for reviewing and providing feedback.