Three Ways to make it a Great New Year!

Happy New Year! I trust everyone had a wonderful holiday season.

Now that we are back to work, we face new and old challenges for the new year. Whether you have made resolutions, whether personal or professional, many of us look at a new year as a time where we can look at things from a fresh perspective. When it comes to business, I always loved observing the business landscape to see what opportunities and pitfalls were out there that I and my team needed to be award of. Here are three things you should think about as we begin a new year:

1. Strategic Goals - Take the time to look at your organization's strategic goals to make sure they are still valid. Things change all the time, especially in business. Macroeconomics, consumer sentiment, market volatility all play a hand in effecting your organization's strategic plans. As a leader, you must take a realistic view of your org's goals and make sure they not only align with your company's goals, but with the reality of today's business climate. All you have to do is take a look at the daily headlines to know that the business climate is very risky today. Be willing to course correct if it looks like your original strategy isn't working. There is no shame in this. The shame would be to know that you need to change, but are too stubborn to do that. As Colin Powell said "Don't let your ego be so close to your position that then your position falls, your ego goes with it."
2. Productivity - Now is the time to take a look at yourself and your work habits. Are you doing everything to maximize your ability to be as productive a leader as possible. That starts with your daily habits. Are you managing your calendars, meetings, emails in the most productive way possible? I have written separate blogs about productivity so I won't go into detail on this. But I stress that you should look at the "how" you do your work. Do you tame the email and calendar or does it tame you? Look at prioritizing the most important tasks of the day first. Don't go back and forth re tasks. Stay focused on the things that will get you the most bang for the buck for your organization every day. Don't go to meetings where you are not contributing anything. Be rigorous about the meetings you are willing to attend and be willing to say no to those things that don't help you drive to your strategic goals. Set aside specific times in the day to look at and respond to emails. Easy? No. Effective? Yes. Look at your own productivity habits and just like strategic goals, course correct if you have to but be productive. Remember, the more productive you are, the more you, the leader, has the time to think strategically and come up with great new ideas versus putting out fires all the time,
3. Me Time - If you know me then you know this is something I talk about all the time. I've always been a Type A kind of person working mostly with other Type A's. I suspect if you are reading this blog, you are the same. Nothing wrong with that. Go for it. Balls to the wall as they say. But, you must have "me time." Working damn near 24/7 is not a winning strategy. As a leader, you need to know when it is time to go full steam ahead, and when it is time to stop and rest. In our technology laden 24/7 cycle of business and news, it is easy to be trapped into looking at your email on your mobile at 3 am to get the jump on the competition. But you will do this at the expense of needed sleep, rejuvenation and rest. You need to be sharp and productive every day as a leader. Yes, some days are better than others and if you are crashing on a crisis, that is another matter. But what you can control - control! Get rest in the evenings. Put the mobile away. When I was at Microsoft, I put my mobile in another room. If the balloon went up, my troops could call me on the landline. (Of course now that I am retired, I have no land line!) But even if you don't have a land line and can't put your mobile away, you don't have to look at it unless you want to. Put it away and rest. Same with weekends. Constantly working on weekends is a non starter. Work if you have to but otherwise, look to yourself, your family, your friends, your pets. Work on your hobbies, have fun, decompress. Work on you! The work will still be there on Monday.

So that's it. As we begin this new year, look to your strategic goals, your productivity and to yourself. Nail these three and you are off to a great year! Let me know how it goes. Till next time!

Mike