My End of December Strategy

Written By Dave Lavinsky
two snow capped mountains

Today I thought it would be helpful if I detailed what I do at the end of December each year. This works very well for me, and I hope it will for you too.

1. Look back at the past year

The first thing I do is look back at the past year. I start with the annual goals that I set at the beginning of last year. Which goals did I accomplish? Which didn’t I?

Next I go through each of my monthly goal documents. Fortunately my team and I create monthly goals each month. Seeing what our goals were in March 2019, for example, is very interesting. Perhaps more importantly, when I go through the monthly goal documents, I see just how much we accomplished this past year.

2. Be grateful

In viewing last year’s annual and monthly goals, I’m never fully satisfied. That’s just my personality, since I set aggressive goals that are hard to attain. So, chances are (and it’s true again this year) that I didn’t accomplish everything I had hoped for during the year.

But rather than focus on that, I always take a moment to be grateful for that which we DID accomplish. I think about all the hard work and all the great things we did do in 2019. I also like to think about how much better the company is now than it was 12 months ago.

3. Look ahead

Next I like to revisit my long-term goals. That is, where do I want my company to be in 5 years? Importantly, since I do this exercise annually, I simply pull up my answer to this question from last year. I decide whether my long-term goals have changed, and why. I then document my new 5-year goals.

I then work backwards to figure out what I must accomplish next year. I start by asking what I need to accomplish in 2020 to make it a great year and to put me on the path to achieving my long-term goals.

I think about financial metric goals such as the revenue and profits I’d like to generate in 2020. And I look at the business assets I must create in 2020. I think about what new products I must create in the coming year. I assess how many new clients I’d like to bring on. I document how many new employees I should recruit hire, and train in the next twelve months. And so on.

4. Plan out the year

I then start mapping my 2020 goals in a Gantt chart so I know exactly what has to be done and when. I document what I must accomplish in January, in February, and so on. Sure, I’ll never get this exactly right, and during each month next year, I’ll adjust my precise monthly goals. But this exercise gives me a great handle on what’s possible to achieve in 2020.

Conclusion

A lot of what I’ve described herein is goal planning; setting goals, trying to achieve them, and then assessing your results. Importantly, goal planning takes practice. That is, the more often you set goals, try to achieve them, and then assess results, the better you get at setting goals that you actually can achieve.

As a result, every year I set and assess goals, I get better at planning out the next year, understanding what I can and cannot accomplish in 12 months, and maximizing my productivity so I build a great company. I hope you are able to do the same for your company. So plan out your long-term goals and 2020 goals now, and I wish you the best of success in achieving them!

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