Resolutions – you can keep them
(Posted on 12/01/22)
At the beginning of any New Year, many of us take stock and make a variety of resolutions we usually can’t hope to continue with for 12 months. Often, they are completely unrealistic – Exercise more? Eat and drink less? Sometimes, even with the best of intentions, they are interrupted when real life gets in the way.
Making New Year’s Resolutions shouldn’t just be confined to January, especially when it comes to business decisions that can affect numerous employees, partners and suppliers. You don’t need a New Year to make a change and to think about how you’d like to see yourself and your business in the future. You can take the plunge whenever, to set new defined goals and targets you’d like to see achieved before the year’s end. It’s simply a matter of identifying where these goals lie – and navigating a route to them.
Making plans
The most important thing about setting yourself challenges and targets is to make them achievable. There’s no point in deciding that overnight anything is possible – anything is, but it often takes a number of separate steps to get there. Planning out your route and deciding on the path to take is crucial to success. Look at where you are now. Look at where you want to be. How do you get from A to B? It’s simple for businesses to ascertain where they are, but there are many different routes to reach B – it’s finding the one that’s most efficient and profitable.
Making progress
Breaking the journey down is crucial, both to see where progress is being made and to allow you an incremental sense of achievement. You can do this by subdividing the process into manageable sections. Think about how you are going to approach the year. By setting achievable goals you can see real progress being made quickly but also steadily, month by month. If you are looking at your company in this way, as a manager or owner, then this process is essentially the business strategy for the oncoming year. Involve other people in the discussion too – financial and marketing experts, for example – so you can chart your progress, by having visible milestones at key points, way markers for progress and achievement.
Renewed focus
Everything’s been disrupted by the events of the last two years, but there is a degree of normality returning now. It’s time to address those decisions you have been postponing and begin again to plan. As a fresh start, the New Year is a great time to do this, but be flexible and prepared to adapt if changes and restrictions occur once more. Having smart and achievable goals throughout the year, rather than putting pressure on to achieve everything by the end of January, demonstrates the importance of planning and strategies to attain this.
The limbo of restrictions has been a huge factor in everyone’s working lives, but they have also resulted in many people revaluating life – working and private – and defining and focussing on what’s really important to them. When planning for the future, think carefully about the last two years. What have you not been able to live without and what have you not really missed? They’re interesting questions to ask yourself – and you might be surprised by the answers.