Whether or not you took last week’s suggestion to evaluate your top three and bottom three from a list of possibilities, make sure you start the new year with some sort of review and goal-setting.
If you’ve been at your work a long time, you might have a routine and feel like you don’t need to do this.
Do it anyway.
If you’ve taken some time off over the holidays, you might feel like you don’t have time to do this.
Do it anyway.
Review, and use the review to set goals. But keep it simple if you’re overwhelmed and temped to procrastinate or skip it.
Use last week’s idea, then use the results to set measurable goals.
Measure last year’s, or last quarter’s, goals against a rubric, then decide if coming goals should just be an extension of last year’s.
Look at all projects, events, or initiatives from last year, and measure them against a 4- or 5-point rubric to decide what to keep, what to develop, and what to scrap. Your rubric could refer to relevance to values, return on investment, or alignment to future goals.
Set all numbers from 2 years ago against numbers from last year (could be anything you measure, or financials) and see what you notice. It’s amazing what you can see when you take a step back from the details.
One year when I did that, I saw that our business had really reduced spending on marketing year over year, and could have afforded to spend more. At the same time, we had set a goal to work harder at retaining existing clients rather than attracting new ones. So, we resolved to use that budget to find ways to maintain relationships, rather than traditional promotion. It’s been money well-spent, as our client retention rate has increased from about 75% to almost 90%.
I’m not sharing that to bog you down in numbers, but to show you that
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