The Festive Season is upon us. The lead up to the Season is hectic for businesspeople, with tight customer deadlines that demand extraordinary effort from the business and its people. Once the end of year is passed, there is a period of calm where we pause, like a marathon runner that has just ‘stumbled across the line’ feeling exhausted but exhilarated. It is a perfect time to revive, reflect, and then refocus.
Business is an endurance activity. As all endurance athletes know, rest is essential for revival after a tough event, allowing the body and the mind to regenerate which will then enable even better future performance. Take time out to revive, doing whatever it is that enables you to relax, and to give back some of your valuable time to those that support you whilst they are too often overlooked.
This ‘quiet after the storm’ enables time to pause and reflect. Our revival time should be when we turn our mind to matters other than the business. Our reflection should take a holistic view of the past year and assess how the business is contributing to our personal vision. We are so consumed in the business during the year that we seldom, if ever, take time to look at it from a ‘3rd party’ point of view. Especially, we seldom assess how our business endeavours are contributing to our personal mission or how we can better align them so that they are working in harmony rather than opposed to each other.
Feeling revived and having reflected on the business and its contribution to us personally, we can refocus. It is time to review our plans and rewrite them, considering the results from the previous year and the opportunities/threats that the year ahead presents.
We all know that ‘New Year Resolutions’ are futile, being noble just after midnight on New Year’s Eve only to evaporate once the euphoria passes a week or two later when things go back to ‘business as usual’.
To effectively refocus yourself and your business, review and rewrite your plans. Make a hard copy then read them. Share them with a trusted advisor and discuss them. If necessary, adjust them, then set out an execution plan with milestones that you will achieve, adjusting your activity as necessary as you review the progress. Set up a ‘Scoreboard’ then use it to surpass your goals. Be clear on what you are aiming for. As the saying goes “If you aim at nothing, that is what you will get!”
I trust that you will take the time to revive, reflect, then refocus this Festive Season. Thank you for reading these articles. I wish you and yours a wonderful Festive Season, with a year ahead that is happy, healthy, and prosperous.
Philip Belcher MBA, FAICD, FIML is Principal of LSE Consulting Pty Ltd, a specialist business leadership and management advisory company.
