It’s a new year and it’s time to re-energize your business. Before you get caught up in the day to day work of operating your business, now is the perfect time to think about what you need to do to work on your business.
Here are four simple suggestions that can help you kick off a successful start to the new year.
1. Bring the team together to review the previous year.
- What worked well? What didn’t work well?
- What products and services are performing best?
- Which products and services need to be discontinued?
- Do a deep dive on the sales data to review trends.
- What are your customers telling you via social media, surveys, emails, inbound phone calls?
How can you combine all this information to identify the key opportunities for the upcoming year?
Scheduling a weekly meeting for the next 4 months to review this important data can help align your team and bring greater focus as you start you new year.
2. Develop a strategic business plan.
- What are the key initiatives you want to achieve in the new year?
- What are the objectives you want to achieve?
- What is the plan to achieve the objectives?
- What are the specific tactics?
- Who owns the implementation of your plans?
- What are the targeted deadlines for implementing your tactics?
- How often will you revisit and adjust your plans?
Consider creating a document that outlines your business plan and share it with the entire team via a tool like Google Drive.
Allow the team to collaborate and revise the document so it becomes an integral part of your ongoing operations. The best business plans evolve over the course of a year as business conditions change in today’s fast-changing world.
3. Post your goals.
Develop a dashboard that lists key benchmarks by month and by quarter. Post it prominently in your office, on your internal website.
Update it on a regular basis, keeping the entire team informed on your progress.
4. Recognize and Reward Achievements.
Celebrate the wins! When your team or an individual help the organization meets an objective, take the time to recognize and reward these achievements.
Individuals and teams respect what you inspect.
These Four Steps Create Results
When you work as a team to set goals and objectives, build a plan, post the goals and recognize and reward achievements, you are more likely to stay focused on the key initiatives that will drive your business objectives.
This process takes discipline and involvement from your entire team, not just a few high-level managers. When the entire team is involved in the process and it is continually revisited and revised, your business will significantly increase the odds you will meet and exceed your goals!
