An executive waypoint is a focused reflection activity for assessing and, if necessary, redirecting your focus as needed. Dan McGuire outlined the process on the Executive Tools podcast1–3.
Information Gathering
- Key Conversations: high level stake holders, boss (What are my blind spots?), direct reports (What should we be doing? What works, what isn’t working?), discussion with love ones.
- Key Documents
- 9-box / succession plans for direct reports
- Org Charts to trigger person → activity thinking
- Company strategy document
- Objective list (e.g. company scorecard, objective list from OKRs)
- Roles and responsibility list
- calendar
- Draft Core imperatives (key things you want to address): I will do …
Key Questions - Think about the “Big Picture” impact of your behavior. - Who do the people who matter most need you need you to be? - What should you be focused on?
Waypoint day
- Create time and space away from others for deep thinking and reflection (e.g. an empty room or house during a holiday)
- Generate insights - review gathered prep materials and write down individual insights, ideally on a post note for a visual layout
- Distill insights into decisions - cluster and group insights until themes emerge that result in decisions
- Further refine, group, and cut until you have three key directional decisions
- Generate five clear action items / next steps for each decision (e.g. get buy in from stakeholder A, get buy in from stakeholder B)
After
Take action on the items generated from your decisions during the waypoint day.
1. Horstman, M. & McGuire, D. The Deliberate Executive Waypoint - Part 1. (2021).
2. Horstman, M. & McGuire, D. The Deliberate Executive Waypoint - Part 2. (2021).
3. Horstman, M. & McGuire, D. The Deliberate Executive Waypoint - Part 3. (2021).