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For the daily follow-up to this meeting, pair it with The 15-Minute Leadership Huddle Agenda and a Shared Priority Board.
Most leadership teams do not lack plans. They lack a shared week. Each leader plans their own calendar in isolation, and by Wednesday the team is pulling in four directions with good intentions. A weekly planning session fixes that with one short meeting, the same agenda every week, and a clear output: a few team priorities, each with one owner.
Why Leadership Teams Need a Shared Weekly Plan
Individual planning is necessary, but it is not enough. When every leader sets priorities alone, three problems show up quickly.
Collisions. Two leaders need the same people, budget, or decision in the same week, and nobody notices until something slips.
Invisible priorities. The most important work lives in one person’s head, so the rest of the team cannot support it or protect time for it.
Silent carry-over. Last week’s unfinished commitments quietly roll forward without anyone deciding whether they still matter.
A shared weekly plan does not replace each leader’s own planning. It sits above it. The team agrees on what matters most this week, and each leader then plans their own week around that agreement.
The 45-Minute Weekly Planning Template
Run this at the same time every week, ideally Monday morning or late Friday afternoon. Keep the timebox. If the meeting regularly runs long, the agenda is being used to solve problems that belong in separate working sessions.
1. Scoreboard (5 minutes)
Start with facts, not opinions. Review the handful of numbers that tell the team whether the business is on track: revenue or bookings, pipeline, delivery or fulfillment, cash, and one customer measure. Read them out, flag anything outside its normal range, and move on. The scoreboard is not a discussion; it tells you where the discussion should go.
2. Last Week’s Commitments (10 minutes)
Each owner reports on last week’s team priorities with one of three answers: done, not done, or changed. “Not done” needs one sentence on why and a decision: carry it forward, reassign it, or drop it. This step is what builds accountability. People follow through more consistently when they know the commitment will be read back next week.
3. This Week’s Team Priorities (15 minutes)
Choose no more than three team priorities for the week. A team priority is work that needs more than one leader to move, or work that matters enough that the whole team should know about it. Everything else belongs on individual plans. Three is a ceiling, not a target. One well-chosen priority that actually gets finished beats five that all advance a little.
4. Owners, Deadlines, and Definitions of Done (10 minutes)
Every priority gets exactly one owner, a day of the week it will be finished, and a one-line definition of done. “Work on the pricing update” is not a priority. “New pricing page live by Thursday, approved by sales and finance” is. Shared ownership feels collaborative but usually means nobody is accountable for the finish.
5. Blockers and Decisions (5 minutes)
Close by asking: what decision or resource does anyone need from this team to finish their priority? Make the quick decisions in the room. Anything that needs real discussion gets its own meeting, with an owner and a time, before you leave.
The Template
Copy this into your planner, a shared document, or your priority board. The same fields every week make the meeting faster and the history easy to scan.
Week of: date
Scoreboard: five numbers, with anything off-track flagged
Last week’s priorities: priority, owner, result (done / not done / changed), decision
This week’s priorities (max three): priority, owner, due day, definition of done
Blockers and decisions: what is needed, from whom, by when
Separate meetings scheduled: topic, owner, time
Rules That Keep the Meeting Short
Start on time, even if someone is missing. The plan still gets made.
Updates are prepared in advance. Nobody reads their inbox to the group.
Problem-solving is scheduled separately, not done live with the whole team watching.
The same person keeps the template each week so the record stays consistent.
How the Weekly Plan Connects to the Rest of the Week
The weekly plan sets the direction. The daily leadership huddle keeps it on track with a few minutes on what changed, what is blocked, and what needs a decision. At the end of the week, each leader’s own weekly review captures what was learned and feeds the next planning session. That loop of plan, check, and review is what turns a set of meetings into an operating rhythm.
Common Mistakes
Too many priorities. If everything is a team priority, nothing is.
Status theater. Long updates that sound busy but do not answer “done, not done, or changed.”
No read-back. Setting priorities without reviewing them next week teaches the team that commitments are optional.
Plans that live in one inbox. If the plan is not visible to the team during the week, it will not guide the week.
Make the Plan Visible
A weekly plan only works if the team can see it between meetings. The Focused Teams planner gives each leader the same structure for shared priorities, owners, and weekly read-backs, so the plan is on the page instead of in someone’s memory. For the full system behind it, see the Team Operating System.
Start this week. Block 45 minutes, use the template exactly as written for four weeks, and then adjust it to fit your team. The structure matters less than the habit of meeting, committing, and reading the commitments back.
