Moments that Matter: Effective Q4 Planning

5 Min. Read

It’s that time of year. The frantic race to the finish, trying to maintain delivery, close deals, and get all the people-related administration (performance and talent reviews etc) done before signing off for 2024. However, rushing through Q4 means you miss out on many golden opportunities to shift your culture, align your culture with your strategy, and lay the foundations for success in 2025.  

In this blog we’re going to look at what are these Moments that Matter, why they’re important, and how you can make the most of the many of them that fall in Q4.  

What are Moments that Matter?

When you’re trying to re-shape your culture, or take it in a new direction, you want employees to 
see, hear, and experience the difference. You need to be overtly signalling to your people and encouraging in them the behaviors you want by role modelling, rewarding, and reinforcing.  

At Walking the Talk, we think about behaviors, systems, and symbols as the main ways that   
people receive culture messages. Moments that Matter are like symbols on steroids –  
they are highly impactful and powerful culture-shaping tactics. The great thing about Q4 is that it’s typically full of them – including year-end performance appraisals, talent reviews, and recognition events.  

Indeed, often people can find corporate culture intangible, but what’s fantastic about Moments that Matter is they are concrete, proven, readily available opportunities to enhance or evolve your culture.  

How do you identify Moments that Matter?

They are those key interactions, events, or milestones that have significance in the lives of employees because they attach meaning to them. Helpfully, most of them are already in your business calendar, so do not involve much (if any) additional work or resources.  

Why are Moments that Matter important in quarterly planning?

They provide an opportunity to take a routine activity and do it differently to get a different cultural outcome. Whether that’s a new way that your leader communicates with employees, re-designing the talent review process, or training managers on how to have better conversations, it’s about giving those high-impact moments a twist that is noticeable, has a positive impact on employees, and sends a different message about culture. 

What is a key part of Q4 planning that too many businesses neglect?  

In many organizations, we see missed opportunities with Moments that Matter. The most common reasons for this are:  

• ‘That’s how we do things round here’. Often activities are done the way they’ve always been done.   
• Culture change can seem overwhelming. When people think about re-shaping culture, they often assume that means a large program of work, including behavioral training. However, in our extensive experience, what really influences people’s behavior are these practical interactions, whether with their manager or senior leaders.  
• Lack of capacity. So many companies just have too much on their plate, and this is especially true in Q4. They don’t have any capacity to even think about what could be simple twists to existing business activities that would help shift their culture. 

What to include in Q4 planning

The key cultural elements that business leaders should include in their quarterly planning are as follows: 

Intention  

Due to the pressures of performance, prioritisation, and the perceived need for speed, most organizations are looking for fast, effective, low or no cost initiatives when it comes to culture.

Moments that Matter tick all those boxes. They are ready and waiting to be used in new and exciting ways to convey a change in culture.  

For Q4 planning of these moments, the key is to be intentional. They require more time, space, and creative thought to be put into them, as any change does.  

Courage & Role Modelling 

Courage is also a critical element. Moments that Matter are meaningful to employees because they have an emotional aspect to them – for example, employees will take performance reviews personally.  

Whether you’re going to have different conversations about performance with employees, or rate people in a new way, that’s going to require courage from your leaders and managers. You have to be prepared to have the difficult conversations about the culture change you want, commit to doing the moments differently, and role model the behaviors you want to see.  

What cultural role do end-of-year appraisals play in Q4?

How individual performance is appraised carries huge significance and can massively influence how people feel about their work, and what they deliver. With Q4 being so busy, it can be easy for these reviews to be short and rushed. Yet all the research suggests that employees want a comprehensive end-of-year conversation with their manager. They want their leader to be prepared, and to provide useful insights for improvement. There’s nothing that makes an employee feel less valued than an unsatisfactory performance review.  
 
This is the one time of the year when employees and their manager should be spending quality time together and making the most of this opportunity to encourage positive behaviors, provide constructive feedback on development areas, and demonstrate your culture in action.  

How to make the most of end-of-year appraisals

Apply triple effort to the preparation of high-quality conversations.

This means collating meaningful feedback from a wide range of people, and HR business partnering to coach managers on how to have the discussions. One of our clients who did this saw a huge improvement in employee engagement and productivity as a result.

Identify high performance as results delivered AND values strongly demonstrated

If you want your culture to change, a powerful signal is to make it clear that you cannot be a high performer if your behavior stinks. Again, one of our clients who introduced this into their review process saw a massive impact on behaviors across the organization.

Introduce a range of data sources to evaluate performance more holistically

This could be: People Survey Results, DEI/ESG, and talent development. For example, you can’t be rated a high performer if there’s considerable turnover in your team, your individual eNPS is not good, and your DEI is poor etc. Evaluating performance on a broader data set that correlates with your desired values and behaviors sends a clear message about what it means to live your culture, beyond simply achieving financial outcomes.

How to show your employees recognition in Q4

Q4 can be a great time to acknowledge individuals for completing great work. What are some ways that managers or executives can show their appreciation? 

Recognition?helps people to see that their company values them, builds a sense of security, and is motivating. What gets recognized also gets mirrored by others, so recognition events can have a significant amplification effect on your culture. Here, you could: 

Publicly reward desired behaviours 

Make heroes by publicly appreciating those demonstrating desirable cultural behaviors. If you want to change your culture, you need to acknowledge those who are behaving as you would like others to. For example, the employee who spoke up early about warning signs on a project – it may have been unpopular, but it showed courage and was the right thing to do.  

Encourage recognition among the team

Introduce peer-to-peer recognition rituals based on the values or culture goals. Recognition from peers has an over-indexed impact on employee morale. Basing it on desired behaviors is an effective way to get people closer to what your culture and values mean in practice.  

Encourage reflection

Retro the year to reflect on successes, challenges, and give ‘thank-yous’. So often the end of year events and messages are crammed with numbers, details about big deals, or strategy updates. But these are also great moments to call out the teams and individuals involved, and be explicit about what element of your culture you saw them reflect particularly well.

What cultural role do talent reviews play in Q4?

Decisions about people – ratings, rewards, promotions etc are always scrutinized for messages about who or what is valued. It’s imperative that you:

Use fair and transparent criteria

The first critical element is to be clear on the criteria for high, middle, and low performance – which means codifying your values and behaviors. There must be alignment on this, otherwise different definitions will be used. While the review process often happens behind closed doors, the criteria and reason for promotions should be visible to everyone.

Differentiate performance based on your criteria

Differentiate performance based on those demonstrating the values most strongly and consistently. High ratings and associated promotions are such a culture shaper. Employees notice who’s moving up and who isn’t, so decisions about them send a clear message about the behaviors you value. By stressing the cultural element to performance and communicating this, your people will be under no illusions about how to get ahead in your company.

Take equality into consideration

Review rating, pay, and promotion decisions to ensure they are equitable across gender, race, and other demographics. This is about looking across your employee population and integrating DEI considerations into talent reviews. In doing so, you’re walking your talk on building a culture of inclusion, which will send a powerful message to your people.

Our advice to executives or people managers for agile quarterly planning

Earlier in the year, you need to be thinking about the cultural outcomes you want from these moments, and therefore considering how you will design them. Our advice is to think through:

1. What is a Moment that Matters in our company? Why does it matter to employees? 

2. How do we normally do it? What’s the typical message that employees receive in this moment? 

3. How do we want it to be different? What’s the new message we want to send?  

4. What can we do practically? How can we make this happen? 

Culture change can be misunderstood. There are often assumptions that it means large-scale redesigns of systems and processes. In short, it can get over complicated and stuck. Moments that Matter provide a way to work with what you already have, think smart, and make small changes that will compound and make an outsized difference to your culture. If you want to get traction on your culture quicker, the answer is already there. With Q4 already underway, the question is – what are you waiting for?  

To help make culture your superpower, contact us. Learn more about how our expert team can help you transform your culture.