📅 Annual board calendar
Hi Everyone,
At Amazon, planning for the following year begins in June, is finalized in November, and is updated again in January once the fourth-quarter results are available.
By the time the year begins, the company has already decided which major decisions belong in Q1, Q2, Q3, and Q4.
Without that kind of sequencing, quarterly meetings tend to become dominated by status updates. The most important decisions are postponed until Q4, when they must compete for attention with the annual budget.
This is as true for leadership teams as it is for boards.
Today, we're covering how to create a simple annual decision calendar in about an hour.
Decide what each quarter is for
Every year, boards and leadership teams typically need to make decisions across six areas:
Strategy: The annual plan, whether to enter or exit a market, and major product or portfolio decisions.
Budget and capital: The following year's operating budget, major investments, and the hiring plan.
Compensation and succession: Senior compensation changes, equity grants, the CEO's annual review, and succession plans for critical roles.
Risk and audit: Approval of the annual audit, insurance renewals, and significant legal, regulatory, or cybersecurity issues.
Major transactions: Acquisitions, fundraising, and strategically important partnerships.
Governance: Board effectiveness, committee membership, chair rotation, and how the board operates.
Once you have listed the decisions, assign each one to the quarter in which it can be made most effectively.
Budget and compensation generally belong in Q4, when the leadership team has the clearest view of the current year's performance and can set priorities for the next one.
Strategy often works best in Q3. By then, you have enough year-to-date information to make an informed decision, while still leaving time for the strategy to shape the budget.
Governance and board evaluation fit naturally into Q2, once the annual audit and reporting cycle has been completed.
Risk and audit usually belong in Q1, when the previous year's results are still fresh and the audit and risk priorities for the new year need to be agreed.
Three decisions that often land in the wrong quarter
If you review only three areas, focus on strategy, succession, and the CEO review.
Strategy left until December
When strategy is discussed in December, budget approval is usually taking place in the same meeting.
Because the budget contains concrete numbers and immediate trade-offs, it tends to dominate the conversation. Strategy then becomes constrained by the budget, rather than guiding it.
Discussing strategy in Q3 allows the strategic choices to shape where money and resources are allocated in Q4.
Succession left off the calendar
When succession is not assigned to a specific meeting, it usually receives attention only after someone announces that they are leaving.
The plan is then created under pressure, even though the risks, potential successors, and development needs could have been discussed months earlier.
The CEO review never gets scheduled
When no quarter is assigned to the CEO's annual review, many boards simply do not complete it.
Directors will still discuss the CEO's performance among themselves, but the CEO may never receive clear, direct, and useful feedback.
Scheduling the review in Q4 gives the CEO time to understand the board's perspective, agree on priorities, and act on the feedback before the new year begins.
How to get started
This approach works whether you are planning the next year or trying to bring more structure to the remainder of the current one.
First, list every significant decision your board or leadership team still needs to make between now and December.
Then assign each decision to either Q3 or Q4.
If more than two major decisions land in the same quarter, reconsider the sequence. One may need to move, or be broken into an earlier discussion and a later approval.
Next, build the decision calendar for 2027 while the Q4 planning cycle is still ahead of you.
Sequencing next year's decisions now means entering the budget process with a clear understanding of what each quarter is intended to accomplish.
And if Q4 is already crowded with budget and compensation decisions, schedule the CEO review and succession discussion first.
They are usually the first two priorities to be displaced when the calendar fills up.
Go Deeper
👉 ExecEdge: Board meetings (80% decisions, 20% updates) — our companion piece on how to run each board meeting once you've mapped out what it's for.
👉 Brad Feld: My Ideal Board Meeting — read this before you plan your next board meeting. The 30/120/30 template alone is worth the click.
👉 Russell Reynolds Associates: Top Boards Do These 4 Things Differently — read this if you want to compare your board's habits with the highest-rated ones in a 750-director survey.
👉 Working Backwards: The Amazon Operating Cadence — how Amazon sequences its year with OP1 and OP2, so you can steal the shape for your own leadership team.
Coming up tomorrow
In tomorrow's issue, you'll see why HubSpot cut its AI price in half, and what that shift tells you about measuring your own AI spend.
P.S. What gets scheduled gets done. Putting a decision on the calendar is the simplest way to make sure it doesn't keep getting bumped.