Welcome to our first blog for 2025. The year has kicked off at a rapid pace and who can believe we are already half way through February. It feels like business activity kicked off a little quicker this year. I often find things are generally slow throughout January and it’s not until after the Australia Day public holiday and kids return to school that business is back in to full swing. For us at Inspire HQ the year ramped up a little quicker this year and in talking to other business owners they have had the same experience.
There appears to be mixed thoughts on what the year ahead looks like and it seems many are sitting tight waiting to see what plays out with interest rates and an election.
I was fortunate enough to be able to take four weeks off over the December – January period and split that time between sunny Queensland and here in Victoria, down on the coast. It’s led to a lot of conversations with others about the value of being able to take an extended break. In my experience and so it seems for a lot of others that I have chatted with, a two week break sometimes isn’t quite long enough to really wind down and switch off. I hadn’t managed a holiday for the second half of last year and it had been a big year so a 4 week break was just what I needed. If you can juggle it, I’d highly recommend an extended holiday, like 4 weeks, to really allow time to switch off and recharge. It also gave me the opportunity to read some great books which I’ll share with you in my next blog.
For many businesses the start of a new year is a popular time to set goals and revisit our strategy for the year ahead. Even if you operate on a financial year, the start of the calendar year is a time of reviewing, tweaking and ensuring you’re on track. It’s at this time of year we have many conversations with business owners and managers about what the year ahead looks like or at least the next six months. While the focus of our conversations is on the plan and goal for the people function of the business it is naturally intertwined with the broader business strategy and the personal and professional goals of the business owner/s. Setting the goals for what we want to achieve this year is the easy part. Achieving that goal is where the hard work begins.
As someone who is big on goal setting, I was feeling very frustrated towards the end of 2024. I hadn’t achieved many of the goals I’d set for myself and the business last year. I won’t bore you with all the reasons and excuses of why I hadn’t achieved my goals. On reflection, the goals were right however my execution was all wrong. What it came down too when I unpacked all the reasons and excuses was the lack of a plan and consistent action.
When working with business owners around what they want to achieve for the year ahead, and when reflecting with them on what worked and didn’t work in the previous year, there are two key areas we explore.
Strategy (or Goal)
What am I trying to do / build?
Structure
If starting from scratch, how would I design it?
In my experience, we can often over complicate things in terms of our strategy and structure, however when you keep coming back to these simple questions, it helps break it down and provide clarity.
Reflecting on why I didn’t achieve my goals in 2024, I mucked up on these two steps.
Strategy: What I was trying to achieve was right however I hadn’t fleshed it out enough and defined it clearly enough. There was a little too much grey.
Structure: This was my big fail. I was never going to achieve my strategy/goals because I didn’t have the strategy fleshed out enough to have the right structures (the plan to be able to perform the consistent action) in place to support achieving them, to make it possible.
If you’re currently working through your goals, your business strategy and or your people function for the year ahead, you might find the strategy and structure questions helpful in navigating your way forward. My other tip: it’s great to work through these questions however working through them with some who will question, challenge your thinking and throw different perspectives at you is where you’ll get the best outcomes. Happy goal setting!
