Beyond the Financial Operating Plan: Establishing Your “Theme for the Year”
Financial goals are for the execs and board. Themes are for motivating the team.
It’s January. As a CEO, you are likely locking in the annual operating plan. You have the bookings targets, gross margin goals, headcount budget, and burn rate settled.
These financial goals are critical—but I’ve come to realize they are rarely enough to motivate the average employee.
Most engineers, marketers, and CSMs don’t wake up in the morning fired up to hit a specific ARR target. They want to be inspired. They need a narrative that connects their daily grind to a larger purpose.
While you need a financial plan for the board, you need a Theme for the Year for the company. This theme should be inspirational and aspirational—something that drives the team to do the best work of their lives.
Here is how I utilized this approach as the CEO at Gigya, and how you can apply it to your startup this year.
The Case Study: #GigyaLeads
In 2017, Gigya was scaling. We had established a rigorous financial operating plan focused on efficient growth and retention.
I was preparing for our kickoff, ready to share the financial plan, when one of my VPs shared a hard truth: the average Gigyan didn’t care about the financial plan. They just didn’t care. They wanted to be inspired to do great work with great people.
I realized we needed something else to motivate the team. After some thought, we introduced a simple theme for the year: #GigyaLeads.
Why #GigyaLeads?
1. Company Level: Market Leadership
At a company level, the goal was to achieve “market leadership” within our emerging category. We wanted to convince Gartner & Forrester to create a Magic Quadrant and Wave, establishing us as the clear leader. This became a major value driver that eventually led to our acquisition the following year.
2. Individual Level: Leadership Mentality
Critically, #GigyaLeads was just as impactful for the individual. This wasn’t about job titles; it was about a mentality. We defined a “Leadership Mentality” as a combination of six core traits we wanted every employee to embody:
Passion
Vision
Problem Solving
Excellence
Servant Mentality
Positivity
Operationalizing the Theme
A theme is useless if it remains abstract. At our kickoff, we broke down exactly what “Gigya Leads” meant for specific functions, contrasting a “Follower Mentality” with a “Leadership Mentality.”
Product & R&D
The Follower: We build what is asked for. We check functional boxes to reach parity.
The Leader: We don’t just ship features; we deliver market-leading offerings before our competition even recognizes the need. We define the roadmap for the industry.
Marketing
The Follower: We sponsor the booth. We run standard campaigns. We show up.
The Leader: We demonstrate visionary thinking. We don’t just attend events; we host them and dominate the conversation.
Sales
The Follower: We receive an RFP and fill it out. We act as a price check for the competition.
The Leader: We reject the premise of being a column on a spreadsheet. We demonstrate vision, get to the decision makers, and reshape the prospect’s thinking to win.
We also made sure the theme was “branded”—appearing on t-shirts, banners, and internal emails to keep it top of mind.
Summary
If you haven’t yet, take a look at your spreadsheets for the year and ask yourself: What is the human story that makes these numbers happen?
Find that theme, define it clearly, and repeat it until it becomes the operating system of your company.