If you didn’t like the news last year, go out and make some of your own this year.
If you didn’t like the news last year, go out and make some of your own this year.
At the start of a new year, and formally a new decade, it’s good to reflect, identify and act upon new ambitions for business as well as personal life ahead.
Obviously it’s critical to maintain focus on the basics. Does your business need to go on a cash spend diet? Are sales stable, will revenues fall with the winter weather or with the new VAT rise? Is the company making money or just manufacturing losses, or just funding the taxman? Is it on the right course for the decade ahead? Does it have an exit? Do you have the right team and resources in place?
And also, on how to deal with major risks, what happens if the economy goes pear-shaped, whether it be a double-dip UK recession or EU deficit contagion that affects the US (which hit a $14 trillion dollar near GDP deficit)? What happens if climate change is real, and the coldest spell since 1656 turns out to be systemic? Or there’s North Korea to worry about, and this sudden earthquake in England.
As Microsoft used to say, ‘Where do you want to go today?’ You should ask strategically, where do you want to be in 2012 or 2020? Is your business creating a positive future for you, for the world in 2012 or 2020? Or more philosophically reflect, if your business were a movie, would it go straight to video or be a box office hit with sequels?
It’s a new year and opportunity abounds to take new actions. What innovations do you have at hand and in the pipeline to make 2011 a differentiated year? What roadmap could change your company and the world? How could your company achieve a jaw dropping IPO or sustained perfect storm of profitable growth? Why would the Prime Minister want to visit your company?
What actions could be taken to improve yourself and your team? Perhaps turning off email for a day a week (or at least limiting emails to a fixed few hours each day) and not using technology on a Sunday might free up new thinking and working time. Perhaps allowing team members to use spare time on unscheduled/innovation projects – a technique employed by Google for up to 20 per cent of employees’ time – might empower them and create new innovation?
Perhaps better team and company events, or increased community involvement might make real ‘the Big Society’ vision, and create a positive dynamic. Perhaps, despite recessionary noise, staff should all get a pay rise in a move that could create a positive outlook. Remember, you reap what you sow.
What is significant is that this year provides numerous opportunities. A tough marketplace dictates it. There is significant unemployment already, and coming, as skills “locked away” in public service and symbiotic consultancies, are released to the private sector, so you might benefit from tapping additional skills at bargain prices.
This year requires agility, innovation, vision, persistence and discipline. It also requires using any slow-down or down-time effectively to reskill, re-learn or to innovate.
Above all, the challenge this year is to make the news, rather than be a servant of it.
