4 Tips for Smarter New Year’s Resolutions for Your Business
Welcome to 2024. With a new year comes new year’s resolutions. If you’re thinking about making a change for your business or just want to reach higher this next year, it’s a great time to make goals and resolutions.
What do you want to accomplish in 2024? Whatever you want to tackle, it helps to have a plan. Resolutions typically fizzle out by February, so if you want to make a real change you need to have a strategy.
4 Tips for Smarter New Year’s Resolutions
We’ve got a few tips to help you make smarter resolutions.
1. Think Big
Yes, your new year’s resolutions should be realistic. But don’t let that stop you from thinking big. What have you always wanted to accomplish? What’s holding you back? How could you make major progress this year?
Consider the impact big changes would have:
If you’re drowning in your email inbox, what if you quit email and shifted to a chat-based communication tool like Slack?
If you want to improve customer service, what if all non-customer service team members spend an hour every day helping out in customer service?
What if you cut a major initiative or department or features from a product or service?
Whatever challenge you want to tackle, take a big swing at it.
2. Think Small
Now that you’ve swung for the fences, what if you bunt? What are some small, seemingly insignificant changes that could make a big difference?
What if you took your team to lunch once a month?
What if you started using a calendar scheduling service?
What if you got better hold music?
Yeah, they’re small changes. But imagine the team building that happens with a monthly lunch. Imagine spending less time scheduling meetings. And what if customers on hold were a tiny bit less perturbed about waiting? Those small changes are worth it.
3. How will you track it?
One of the challenges with new year’s resolutions is tracking progress and following up. A vague goal like losing weight or getting in shape isn’t quantified and it’s easy to settle. A plan to go to the gym three times a week suddenly becomes taking the stairs once a week and you call it good.
Make your goals realistic and strategic by coming up with a quantifiable goal and a way to track it. If you can quantify progress, you’ll see the impact that goal is having. That’s momentum that will keep you going.
4. How will you celebrate it?
If you can meet that goal (based on your quantifiable tracking), how will you celebrate the win? A reward can be good motivation, so think of how your business could celebrate a major new year’s resolution accomplishment.
Share it: Share the celebration so your whole team knows what they’re working toward.
Worth it: Make it commensurate with the task. Boosting your revenue by 10% is worth a lot more than a sheet cake.
Teamwork it: Plan your celebration based on those working on the task. If it’s a solo resolution, it’s easy to treat yourself. For a team resolution, focus on what your team wants and give them input on the celebration.
Good Luck!
Best of luck with your new year’s resolutions and business goals in 2024. Here at Evolve Workplace, we’re big fans of doing business smarter. That starts with where you work.