I know, it’s only February, but hear me out. The year is only four quarters, and we are almost done with the first one. Q1 is well known as the “back to business” season after the holiday merriment is in the rearview mirror. It feels good to get immersed again, but do poke your head up to make sure you’re getting traction where you need it. Here’s how and in order:
For yourself:
If you haven’t booked a vacation for yourself by now, do it in the next 5 days. We need time away to decompress. And face it, when you put in 60+ hours per week, it helps to get away so you can start to actually miss it. I find this to be a healthy cycle. When I start to miss the action and jokes, it’s a good break.
For your craft:
Q1 is usually all customer or internal focus. Find an outside training opportunity to bend your mind a bit. Maybe it’s an inspirational entrepreneurs’ conference, or an industry-specific event. Perhaps it’s a personal coaching boot camp. Whatever you’re craving, you have to feed your soul and bring back freshness to your teams.
For your craft:
Q1 is usually all customer or internal focus. Find an outside training opportunity to bend your mind a bit. Maybe it’s an inspirational entrepreneurs’ conference, or an industry-specific event. Perhaps it’s a personal coaching boot camp. Whatever you’re craving, you have to feed your soul and bring back freshness to your teams.
For your team:
Your teams, at all levels, are heads down right now too. Take a walk and ask how they’re doing; check out the work and celebrate it. Your team will appreciate the support, and you’ll feel the pride in their product. A win-win.
For leadership:
Get your leadership team offsite in March to evaluate progress toward goals and to surface key issues that need deep problem solving as a team. It’s hard to imagine trading a day of office progress for a day of talking around the table, but I promise you there are issues that are about to show up hard. Weekly status is good; complementing with deep issue resolution is better.
For operations:
How “real” is your forecast? These are typically made when there is always an “optimism” factor infusing them. Right about now is when things start to look “really real.” Do yourself a favor, dig into your forecast, and validate that you are working with the best intel. If not, adjusting sooner in the calendar year is far easier than waiting to see what happens.
For business planning:
Something that’s been helpful for me is tossing out the ambiguous 12-month plan and replacing it with four 90-day plans. It helps to focus on the critical priorities, assign them to accountable leaders, and make them happen. As long as these ladder up to the year-end goals, you’ll find that you cover a lot of ground quickly.
For marketers:
Test early in the year. If budgets permit, structure your market and creative tests in Q1 and Q2 so you have ample time to read the results and reallocate investments on a rolling basis. This will help you maximize the time you have by arming yourself with the best strategies that you can bank on.
The momentum of an active Q1 is intoxicating, and it’s easy to be excited about the year ahead. However, knowing that your goals are not in a straight line, check-in to make sure that the year doesn’t get away from you.
At your service,
Bob
