With the new year just around the corner and the holiday cheer slowing people down at work, it’s essential to motivate and excite your team for 2020. So much can be happening this time of year that it becomes difficult to focus on 2020 or even next week- it often is a struggle to even wrap our heads around the fact that the new decade is just a couple of weeks away.

Although the reality of not only a new year but also a new decade can be hard to swallow, there is still more than enough time to set ourselves up for success if we begin preparations now.

  1. Reflect

    Take some intentional time and reflect on this past year’s performance and the performance of this past decade. You want to look at not only the personal goals you’ve met or haven’t met, but look at the goals your organization had as well. Allow individuals in your organization to also reflect on their performance, both at work and outside. A lot has happened in ten years. Did you get your organization to where you wanted it to be from five years earlier? Were you able to build and sustain that strong team you promised yourself? If you did plan for last year and didn’t deliver, what went wrong? Take this time to embrace your failures and the failures of your organization. A thorough understanding of what lead you to your failures will help prevent similar situations moving forward because we learn not just from experience, but the reflection of experiences.

  2. Review Your Upcoming Strategic Goals

    Within the hierarchy of your company, it’s important to understand what the long-term and short-term goals are. These goals go hand-in-hand with our reflections of this past year and the past decade. We can only aim to do as well as we can improve from the past. When putting together a structure of goals and objectives, look at the organizational goals first and then put together objectives or targets for each department and individual to work toward on a weekly, monthly, or annual basis. Goals need to be achievable and relevant so individuals within your organization are excited to reach them and know that their efforts will produce measurable results. Check in with your team regularly to ensure that their goals are attainable and that problems are addressed throughout the process.

  3. Plan Meetings and Execute

    Although most strategic planning meetings happen before the end of each fiscal year, it’s never too late to plan meetings throughout your organization to ensure your organization remains in constant alignment. Planning regular meetings can help align the organizational vision for 2020, so long as they are effective and planned strategically. Every decision or topic of discussion within a meeting should be actionable and therefore becomes a Strategic Next Action (SNA). SNAs can be utilized in many stages of reaching our desired goals and outcomes, but for meetings to be executed successfully, all tasks to follow up should become SNAs. Of course, meetings always have room for collaboration and problem solving, but once a decision is made, it then follows a task. Similarly, if a discussion runs too long, it can become an SNA to reschedule a meeting around that topic with the designated subject matter experts.

Your organizational success ultimately reflects your attitude as a leader and the approaches you use within the organization. Encourage individuals to express themselves and allow them to take charge of key projects that help them attain their goals. If the individuals at your organization aren’t aligned with your long-term goals, use the rest of this year and the beginning of next year to realign on the organizations’ vision and their specific role in attaining success. Create alignment in that vision by integrating strategies that help your organization adopt change better and more sustainably.

If you’ve taken the steps necessary to plan for next year and beyond, but still can’t seem to find alignment within your organization, our consultants can help get you on the right track towards a more productive new year.