Terms that appear with an asterisk (*) are configurable and may differ from your Ninety. Explore our glossary of terms.

Before running your Annual Planning Meeting*, there are items within Ninety that users should prepare in advance. While the Quarterly* and Annual Planning Meeting* work similarly to the Weekly Team Meeting* in that they are integrated with the other Ninety tools, cleaning and reviewing your information before Day 1 saves your team valuable time.

Tip: Create To-Dos* for your team to prepare.

One way to prepare for your Annual Planning Meeting* is to customize your agenda.

While your account comes with standard Weekly*, Quarterly*, Annual, Focus Day, and Vision* building agendas; section changes, and custom additions help cater the tools to fit your team's needs. The Team Health sections, for example, only include a few pointers on the section's intention. A suggestion is to customize the agenda so that the default Team Health section is a much shorter period of time, allowing your team a brief overview before diving into a custom Team Health section where you can embed a shareable link to your group's chosen team building tool.

Additional suggestions for custom sections may include a shareable link to your team's CRM data, or even a slide deck on your team's growth model. Learn more about customizing your meeting agenda.

Since a Quarterly Planning Meeting* is essentially built into the Annual Planning Meeting*, all team members should come to the meeting prepared to review their current Rocks*, and create new ones for the following quarter. All Rock* information should be up to date, including status, details, and any additional comments to aid in explaining the Rock's*(in)completion. Predetermined Rocks* for the following quarters should be listed on the Long-Term Issues and prioritized along with the incomplete portions of any current Rocks*.

Ideally, the Short-Term Issues* list should be reviewed during the last Weekly Team Meeting* of your quarter so that any relevant Short-Term Issues* are moved to the Long-Term Issues list*. Additionally, all participating Annual Planning Meeting* members should think through, add to, and edit your team's Long-Term Issues* list prior to the session.

During this time, Rock* candidates and the most relevant Long-Term* Issues should be prioritized to Issues* that may no longer be relevant move toward the bottom or get archived. Similar Issues* can now be merged together so that they can be better prioritized.

If this is your team's first Annual Planning Meeting*, the SWOT* (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) portion of your Vision* page may not yet contain any information. If this is the case, a large portion of the SWOT* section in your agenda is dedicated to creating this analysis.

Prior to the session, your team would benefit from an overview of what a SWOT* is and how it is used. It may also be helpful for each team member to come to the meeting having populated a single strength, weakness, opportunity, and threat, or having assigned a single individual to each of the four sections.

If your team has already created a SWOT* analysis, having a To-Do* for each team member to review the existing version and add any new items they think may be relevant will ensure everyone is already on the same page once the meeting begins. Links to outside resources and articles relating to your team's SWOT* can be added in a custom section before or after the SWOT portion.

To ensure a smooth Annual Planning Meeting* without technical difficulties, the facilitator and/or scribe should start and attempt to run a mock Annual Planning Meeting* in Ninety once the agenda is complete.

Not only does this help familiarize you with the software, but it also helps identify any concerns with the customized agenda.