Every January, our 6-month planning process for the following fiscal officially starts. It kicks off with an all-hands / all-agencies meeting called the Mid-Year-Review, where each unit and its agencies present an assessment of all their initiatives for the current year, results, challenges encountered, learnings and potential room for improvement in front of the entire company and all the agency partners. This process invites us to stop and think deeply about what is working and what we can do to improve our results. It is a thought-provoking process and a priceless opportunity to awaken our curiosity as individuals and as team members, to find answers, solutions, and new ideas to chan

The next step is Planning One. From our initial thinking process, countless ideas surface, and start shaping our approaches for the next fiscal year. Each unit, including internal teams and agency partners, goes through an ideation process, a couple of pre-planning meetings, and prepares a document outlining the thinking that will shape their strategies and executions for the new year. That document is presented in front of the entire company and agency partners in an immersive two-day conference. This is the opportunity for each unit to understand what the other units are doing and how they are thinking about the business, and to uncover opportunities for alignments, partnerships, and joint ventures to be established among units.

The last phase takes into consideration the feedback offered by our CEO during the Planning 1, the teams regroup within each unit to polish their strategies, propositions, and approaches, and return for Phase Two with a final plan. Between Phase One and Phase Two, the budgets for each unit get approved, and each unit knows its exact budget for the year. Their strategies and tactics presented during this last phase are now beyond just a proposal. They are already an annual plan with detailed execution approaches, tactics, and budget allocations.