Turn the mid year review into a pruning meeting, not a status tour
By the halfway point of the year, most organisations are drowning in priorities. The only credible mid year review is a pruning exercise where each team names work it will stop so the remaining goals can reach full performance. If your leadership calendar only allows a polite business review at this stage, you are choosing theatre over results.
Start by asking every team to list specific H1 commitments, including goals set in January and the projects quietly added in March and April. In the review conversation, require each senior manager to identify at least one initiative per team that will be publicly stopped for the second half, with a clear explanation of the performance data and capacity constraints that justify the kill. This is where real management happens, because the business strategy becomes visible in what you stop funding, not in the slide about strategic aspirations.
To keep the meeting from turning into a defensive year review, frame it as a portfolio reset, not a personal performance review. Ask one simple question for every line item on the list of work from six months ago: what did we learn that we did not know at the start of the year business cycle. When leaders answer that question honestly, they surface which goals are still strategic and which ones were only relevant months ago, when the market, marketing funnel and cost of capital looked different.
Use a disciplined structure for the mid year review across all business units. First, review performance data for the half year, including revenue, margin, customer retention and employee engagement, and compare it with the goals set at the start of the year business plan. Second, ask which initiatives are best performing against those metrics and which ones are consuming disproportionate time from scarce senior leadership talent. In one mid market technology firm, for example, a structured mid year portfolio review led to stopping 18 percent of active projects and consolidating another 12 percent, freeing roughly 20 hours per week of executive time for the remaining strategic bets.
Third, decide what to stop, what to slow and what to accelerate for the second half, and write those decisions into a revised operating rhythm with explicit check ins. When you conduct performance discussions later, you can point back to this business review and show how the strategy changed, which protects managers from being judged on obsolete commitments. A mid year review that produces no kills is a signal that the review itself is the theatre, not the management system.
Rebalancing goals, capacity and politics in the second half
The most common failure pattern in a mid year review is simple: leaders add new priorities without removing any existing ones. That is how you end up with a halfway year portfolio that looks twice as large as the January plan, while the same exhausted teams are expected to deliver full performance. When SHRM reports that balancing short term results with long term capability is a top CEO concern, this is the operating reality behind that headline. Their 2022 Executive Network report, for example, highlights that roughly seven in ten leaders feel pressure to deliver immediate financial outcomes while simultaneously building future skills and capacity (SHRM Executive Network, 2022).
To avoid this trap, make capacity visible in the mid year discussion, not just revenue and marketing targets. Ask every senior leader to quantify how much time their best performing people actually have for new work in the second half, and challenge any business strategy that assumes invisible extra hours. If the numbers do not add up, you either kill work now or you quietly accept that the year reviews in Q1 will be a blame game about missed goals.
Politics makes this harder, especially when the project you need to stop has a powerful sponsor on the board or in the executive committee. When you propose killing such a project during the business review, bring hard performance data, a credible alternative investment and a narrative that protects the sponsor’s credibility in front of their peers. You are not just managing a portfolio of initiatives, you are managing a portfolio of relationships that will shape future performance reviews and promotions.
One practical move: separate the strategic portfolio conversation from individual performance review discussions by at least one week. Use the first meeting to decide which initiatives live or die for the second half, then use the second meeting to conduct performance check ins that reflect those revised priorities. This sequencing helps managers avoid the unfair situation where someone is penalised in a performance review for work that leadership chose to stop days later.
For a concrete deliverable, give each leader a one page checklist to complete before the portfolio meeting: (1) list all active projects with owners and target outcomes, (2) mark any initiative with no clear metric for success, (3) flag work that has missed two consecutive milestones, (4) estimate monthly hours from critical talent on each item, and (5) identify at least one project to stop, one to slow and one to accelerate. Collecting this simple artefact in advance forces trade offs before people walk into the room and can be turned into a downloadable one page template that standardises preparation across the organisation.
Designing a mid year review H2 reset that managers can actually run
Most performance reviews fail not because the strategy is wrong, but because the operating rhythm is incoherent. You cannot run a serious mid year review H2 reset if your managers only have annual performance review templates and ad hoc one to one conversations. They need a concrete script for how to conduct performance discussions that connect the half year portfolio decisions to individual goals set and revised expectations.
Start by standardising three conversations for every manager in the weeks after the mid year business review. First, a team level meeting where the leader explains which projects were stopped, which ones were accelerated and how that changes the goals for the second half, using clear performance data and simple language. Second, individual check ins where each person’s goals set are rewritten to match the new business strategy, with explicit trade offs about what will no longer be measured in the year review.
Third, a short written summary that documents these revised commitments, so that performance reviews at the end of the year business cycle can reference what was actually agreed, not what someone remembers from months ago. This is where tools and templates matter, because vague forms invite vague management. If you need concrete language, use structured performance review examples for managers that describe real work instead of generic competencies.
To keep the system human, insist that every manager runs at least one qualitative review mid conversation focused on learning, not rating. Ask: what did we learn in the first half year that changes how we will work together in the second half, and what support do you need from me to hit the revised goals. When managers treat these check ins as a chance to remove obstacles rather than to police effort, they build trust that pays off in both performance and retention.
Finally, embed this rhythm into your leadership calendar so it becomes part of the way you run the business, not a one off event. The trend toward transformation routinisation means that change is no longer a special project, it is the default operating mode, and your mid year review should reflect that reality. If you want a sharper diagnostic on how overloaded your managers already are before you add more H2 work, run a manager engagement audit using a structured lens such as the one described in recent Gallup research, which found that only about 27 percent of managers were engaged in 2023 and that unclear priorities were a major driver of disengagement (Gallup, 2023).
Metrics, trade offs and signals that your mid year process is broken
A serious mid year review H2 reset lives or dies on the metrics you choose. If you only track lagging financials, you will miss the early signals that your best performing initiatives are starved of capacity while low value projects consume leadership attention. The right mix is a small list specific to your business model, combining financial, customer, operational and people indicators that can be reviewed in a single meeting without drowning everyone in data.
For the half year checkpoint, track three categories of performance data with discipline. First, outcome metrics such as revenue growth, gross margin and customer retention, compared with the goals set at the start of the year business plan and the revised targets agreed during any earlier reviews. Second, leading indicators such as sales pipeline health, product release cadence and employee engagement scores, which tell you whether the second half is likely to accelerate or stall.
Third, capacity and focus metrics such as number of active projects per team, average meeting hours per week for senior leaders and the ratio of time spent on strategic work versus internal coordination. When those numbers creep up quarter after quarter, your year reviews will inevitably turn into post mortems about overload rather than celebrations of performance. Do not wait until Q4 to confront this; use the halfway year checkpoint to kill or consolidate work before sunk cost bias becomes irresistible.
There are also qualitative signals that your mid year process is broken. If managers cannot explain in one sentence why a project still matters for the business strategy, it probably belongs on the stop list for the second half, no matter how many months ago it was launched with fanfare. If no one can name a single initiative that was stopped in the last year review cycle, you are running a system that only adds and never subtracts.
Finally, treat a mid year review that produces no portfolio kills as a red flag about your culture, not a sign of excellence. Either your leadership is unwilling to make trade offs in front of the board, or your management information systems are too weak to support hard choices about where to conduct performance bets. In both cases, the fix is the same: sharpen the data, shorten the list, and remember that strategy is not the org chart, but the decision rights.
FAQ: making the mid year review H2 reset work
How often should managers run check ins around the mid year review ?
Managers should run at least three structured check ins around the mid year review: one before to gather performance data and surface risks, one immediately after the leadership meeting to translate portfolio decisions into revised goals, and one a month later to confirm that the new commitments are realistic. This cadence keeps the second half focused without turning the process into constant surveillance. It also gives employees a clear narrative about how their work connects to the business strategy.
What is the difference between a business review and a performance review at mid year ?
A business review focuses on the portfolio of initiatives, financial results and strategic choices for the organisation, while a performance review focuses on individual contributions and development. At mid year, you should run the business review first to decide what the company will stop, start or accelerate, then run performance reviews that align each person’s goals with those decisions. Mixing the two conversations in one meeting usually leads to vague feedback and no real portfolio change.
How do you handle projects that looked strategic months ago but no longer fit ?
When a project made sense months ago but no longer fits the current market or capacity, treat it as a learning asset, not a failure. Use the mid year review H2 reset to document what you learned, redeploy the team to higher value work and communicate clearly to sponsors and teams why the decision was made. This protects morale while freeing time and budget for initiatives that better support the second half priorities.
What metrics matter most for a half year checkpoint ?
The most useful half year metrics combine financial outcomes, customer health, operational reliability and people indicators. For example, revenue versus plan, gross margin, churn, on time delivery, incident rates, engagement scores and regretted attrition together give a balanced view of performance. The key is to limit the list specific to your business model so leaders can actually use the data to make decisions during the mid year meeting.
How can senior leadership reduce the political cost of killing projects ?
Senior leadership can reduce the political cost of killing projects by framing the mid year review as a portfolio optimisation exercise, not a referendum on individual sponsors. They should bring transparent performance data, propose alternative investments for freed resources and publicly acknowledge the value of the work already done, even when a project stops. When the board sees this discipline applied consistently, it becomes safer for executives to recommend stopping their own initiatives in future cycles.