5 Things You MUST Do to Start the Year Right

How To Create Your Management New Year’s Resolutions

Welcome to a New Year!  The beginning of a new year offers the closest thing we ever get to a fresh start as a manager, allowing us to recalibrate expectations of ourselves and our employees.  It also marks a great time for business leaders to set the next 12 months off on the right foot.  Between year-end activities at work and holiday time spent with family, it feels like each December goes by more quickly than the last one.  For me, the holidays provide time to rest and recharge.  Professionally, it is the time of year when I pause and reflect.  In particular, I find myself evaluating how I did and how I can improve as a boss.  When January 1st rolls around, though, the gears start turning again as I prepare to return to the office and greet my staff.  Here are 5 New Year’s tips for managers who want to hit the ground running.

1.  The Best Way to Improve Team Performance Is…

The best way to improve a team’s performance and to build a strong, sustainable organization is to take time to reflect on just how far you have come.  January is the perfect time to do this.  After you’ve had the last sip of eggnog, take a little time to pause, reflect and evaluate the past 12 months.   Here are some critical questions you should ask yourself at the beginning of January:

• What went well last year?
• What didn’t go so well?
• How did we perform against our metrics?
• What surprised me?
• How did each team member do?
• How well did you recognize employees for a job well done?
• What do you wish you had done differently?  Better?  Less of?

Additionally, take a look in the mirror.  How did you do as a boss?  As a leader?  Are you proud or disappointed of what you accomplished?  Think about your employees, your customers and your business as a whole.  In January, I often find myself evaluating my own performance as a leader and manager, and even though I’m generally happy with my achievements, I always find things I can improve upon.  If you’re struggling to evaluate your own performance, ask a mentor or a trusted peer for outside input.  What’s in the past is in the past, but the beginning of the year is a great time to celebrate your successes as well as to learn from your faults.

RELATED: Determine Your Leadership Style With These 9 Questions

2.  Conduct a SWOT Analysis With Your Team

The start of a new year also marks a great time for you to perform a SWOT evaluation alongside your team.  A SWOT, or Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats assessment is a group exercise in which you have an open and honest conversation about the current state of affairs in your department or organization.  Even if you have conducted a SWOT evaluation previously, schedule time in January to review and update it together.

A SWOT evaluation should not just be about conducting a critical analysis of how things are going and then forgetting about it for the rest of the year.  Rather, use your SWOT study to guide improvements and changes you need to make in order to maximize strengths and guard against weaknesses and threats.  Additionally, refer to your SWOT analysis to guide goal setting and to identify the strategic moves you make as an organization.  You can learn more about how to do this in our SWOT Guide.

3.  Identify Necessary Changes

Effective businesses and managers recognize the need to continuously evolve in order to remain relevant and competitive.  After you’ve dedicated time to evaluating your overall performance (and hopefully conduct a SWOT evaluation), the beginning of the year marks a great time to identify and implement any changes you see necessary for the months that lay ahead.

Perhaps you feel it necessary to increase the frequency of your one-on-one meetings with staff.  Or maybe you should eliminate the need for weekly reports from your employees because you never have time to read them, and a monthly report will do.  Keep in mind that making changes does not mean you only introduce new initiatives, but also that you eliminate activities that have not added value to your business or team.  Getting rid of waste is always a good thing.

10 Areas You May Want to Look to Make Changes or Improvements This Year:

• Frequency of Employee One on One meetings
• Standard reporting
• How you address performance problems
• Staff meetings and department communication
• Documenting and reviewing lessons learned
• Project review frequency and process
• Marketing campaigns and activities
• New product offerings based on last year’s client interest
• Budget planning and forecasting process
• Organizational structure changes for improved efficiency

4.  Establish Your Goals

Effective management of an organization begins with setting goals that you and your stakeholders want to achieve. The beginning of a new year is the absolute perfect time to set goals for the upcoming 12 months – last year is over, start fresh! 

Take a little time to create your top four or five key initiatives for your team in the coming year.  These should be your key areas of focus, those few things that everyone’s efforts should support. 

Goals for employees and the team as a whole should follow the S.M.A.R.T. framework – Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic and Time-Based.  In other words, they should be worthy of your precious time, but should be appropriately realistic in terms of what you can achieve in the next 12 months.

Equally, the goals you set need to be meaningful such that they will support your overall strategy for your team and organization over the long haul. The biggest mistake managers make when it comes to goal setting is creating too many small, inconsequential goals, that do not effectively serve a specific purpose.  Setting unrealistic targets is irresponsible, and setting insignificant goals is wasteful.

RELATED: A Quick Guide to Setting SMART Goals

5.  Renew Your Vision and Set Expectations

Once you’ve taken time to reflect, evaluate performance and any necessary changes for the upcoming year, set up a kick off meeting with your team to introduce your plans. In your kickoff meeting:

• Share your personal impression of the last year with your employees, both the positive and the negative.
• Revisit your long-term vision for the organization.  Where are you going? What do you want to see happen?
• Ask for input, thoughts and feedback from the team, in terms of their own assessments of last year.

Take the time to highlight what you expect from the team and how the goals you’ve set for the next 12 months fulfill and support that long-term vision.  A public setting also serves as the best time to recognize clutch performance of select employees last year.

Other Things to Do to Start Your Year Off Right

No matter what you decide, take advantage of the fresh mindset that you and your staff will collectively have in January to outline activities for your upcoming year.  Here are some other things you might want to consider as far as your management New Year’s resolutions:

• Plan visits to strategic or important customers.
• Identify any external training classes for your staff.
• Research any industry trade shows or events you would like to attend.
• Initiate plans for a company outing, family day or event later in the year.
• Map out plans for any employee promotions in the next 12 months.
• Based on last year’s financials, identify ways to reduce cost this year.

A new year marks a new beginning.  What management New Year’s resolutions are you making this year?  Leave a comment and share with others!

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