This is a time to celebrate a new beginning, and a time to wish all of my customers, associates and prospects a safe, happy and prosperous New Year! This is also a time, to think about creating and implementing New Year's Resolutions that can make a difference in your life/business success now and next century.
Creating, implementing and sticking to New Year's Resolutions for your life/business can yield high-positive results that can make your life/business more successful, enjoyable, and prosperous. There is a psychological impact to making formal Resolutions at the beginning of a New Year.
Throughout the world, people use the first month of the New Year to announce their resolve that the rest of the year will be better than the year that just ended. That sense of optimism and opportunity provides a good start for implementing long-term changes and/or Resolutions. Build in success by requiring everyone involved in the identification of New Year's Resolutions for your life/business to follow these rules:
1. Formalize the Resolutions by writing them out and distributing copies to all employees, family/management members or worthy associates.
2. Assign responsibility for implementing each Resolution. Select a date for reporting results for each Resolution, including an ongoing report during the year, if possible.
3. Identify a benefit to the life/business for each Resolution. When possible, set a realistic benefit goal in quantifiable terms, such as percents, numbers, or dollars.
4. Identify a potential benefit to business, customers, prospects and employees for each Resolution. Give as much thought as necessary to providing recognition and rewards for anyone who assist with creating and implementing the Resolution(s).
5. Affirm management’s commitment to making the changes by providing sufficient emotional, financial and staff support for each Resolution. With these expectations in effect, invite all employees and family/management members to make one or more suggestions for making the business better/bigger/more efficient/more profitable/more satisfying, etc. -- whatever improvement that the individual’s unique perspective can identify. Specific areas – new business opportunities, employee retention, recapturing customers, waste reduction, improving customer/public relations, etc. -- may be identified to draw attention to areas that management has identified as needing improvement.
Be careful not to inhibit the identification of other areas that may be invisible to management but potentially significant to company success. From the participants, form a committee representing all groups within the company to review the suggested improvements and to prioritize those changes according to criteria that is relevant to the business. Top management/owners can then select the top five or ten suggestions that will become the formal 2009 New Year's Business Resolutions. Limiting the number of Resolutions tends to focus attention and minimizes the likelihood of having these meaningful areas that need attention fall to the wayside along with so many other well-intentioned, but short-lived personal New Year's Resolutions. With individualized Resolutions in place, your business can look forward to a full year of improvement, new zest for achievement, and the kind of company-wide involvement that experts recommend for success.
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