A common expression thrown around as we enter a new calendar year is “New Year, New me!”
This is ultimately paired with a New Year’s resolution where people try to adopt a new habit that will bring them more health, wealth, and happiness in the year.
New Year’s resolutions have often had a negative stigma attached to them because many don’t stick and often fail, to the point that late January is often referred to as the saddest time of the year.
The weather (in my area at least) that time of year doesn’t help, but it just means that people have given a valiant effort to change but that misses the mark for whatever reason.
This is not relegated to personal pursuits. During your strategic planning and budgeting process, your small businesses will go through an exercise that closely resembles the setting of a New Years’ Resolution.
We want to improve our business to achieve a higher level of performance (health), we want to increase profitability (wealth), and we want the company to become more efficient to eliminate the mistakes and headaches that come with business (happiness).
So, what will be different for your business in 2023? Will you break the cycle of a bad year, or will you continue and build on the success that you’ve had in 2022?
Many companies have faced many different circumstances, but one thing we can bank on is the external challenges we will face, like the ones we have met in this post-COVID environment. But even though the calendar has changed, you and your company will need to change that fast.
In doing some light research (Google), I have looked at why New Years’ Resolutions fail. They are all obvious: unrealistic resolutions, lack of accountability, no tracking or review, lack of planning, self-doubt, and all-around unclear goals.
In researching why only 16% of resolutions work (per the Economic Times), it quickly dawned on me that our practices in Roundtables of setting commitments are the exact way to combat the high failure rate of personal and business new years resolutions.
The New York Times had an article called “How to make (and keep) a New Year’s Resolution.” The step they listed echoed the process of hitting commitments in Roundtables. S.M.A.R.T Goals.
That’s right, Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound. Making our goals Specific makes the steps and outcome clear to remove most improvement plans’ ambiguous nature.
Making it Measurable gives the exact target you are aiming for and will remove any doubt on whether or not you were successful. It is great to have big goals, but when we focus on making our resolutions achievable, it can often be the first or second step in reaching a particular summit. And this allows you to win and not flail because you created an elusive target for that timeframe.
Having a relevant goal will keep us grounded on what is essential to ourselves and the business. And lastly, creating a resolution that is Time-Bound will create that final framework needed to allow us to know where we are along the way and where we need to be at any given time.
So, as you set your goals for 2023, just think back to all the commitments that you have hit (or will hit for our new members) in your time in Roundtables, and be S.M.A.R.T when setting your New Year’s Resolutions.
Wishing you incredible success and happiness in the New Year!
Sincerely,
Steve Wheeler and the entire Remodelers Advantage Team