At this time of year it is very tempting to skip ahead and focus on planning for 2022, but please don’t miss the opportunity to pause and reflect on 2021’s achievements. Not only is it a wonderful chance to remind yourself what you and your team have achieved this year (and reinvigorate your sense of purpose at a time when everyone’s energy levels are flagging!), there is value in taking stock of the current year’s lessons before you launch into planning the next one.

After all, only newly created businesses are starting 2022 with a blank slate. 

A moment of reflection grants plenty of opportunities for established businesses to take the best and most productive practices from this year into the new year and gives them a reason to build on or discard those processes that didn’t serve the business well.

A framework for this review process may help you maintain a balanced perspective, including giving the wins from early in the year the same weighting as those that occurred more recently, and recognising that everything has value – even the lessons you learned the hard way.

Some questions to get your review process started –

  • What were our achievements?
  • How did these achievements influence our growth?
  • What did we learn?
  • How did we overcome setbacks?
  • Did we miss any opportunities?
  • What did we do to encourage a positive team culture this year?
  • What are the talents and skills in our team that played a part in our success?
  • How have we celebrated our successes?
  • How will we take the lessons learned into next year?

It’s worth regularly checking your objectivity throughout the process, involving others where they can contribute a different viewpoint and maintaining a healthy curiosity about both good and bad outcomes.

We’re confident that the ability to use the insights you uncover to bolster your planning process for 2022 will make it time well spent, and you might surprise yourself with more reasons to celebrate than you had imagined!

If you would like to take a deeper dive on this and join one of our strategy workshops in 2022, please contact us to discuss.  We have options ranging from small business group workshops, making strategy affordable and attainable even for small business, through to dedicated company strategy workshops facilitated just for you.

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