Julian’s Business Tips: Looking Back to Look Forward
Later on this year, I’ll probably be suggesting that you look forwards, and set your 2024 business goals.
But you won’t be able to do that effectively until you have reflected upon, and most importantly learnt from, your experiences of this year.
It’s important that you do this regularly but even more important that you are honest with yourself!
Here are some questions that you might want to start with:
• Did you achieve your goals?
• What has worked well for you?
• What hasn’t worked, or didn’t work out according to plan?
• What have you enjoyed?
I’m sure lots of you ask these questions all the time – but what do you then do about it? If there is no resulting action, then you’re wasting your time!
Once you have some answers, I suggest you take it to the next level. Can you think why? Could you do better or, more importantly, WHAT could you do better?
Sometimes we don’t achieve potential because we don’t back ourselves enough – was it a lack of confidence that meant you didn’t hit your targets?
What could you do now to improve your confidence? Is it a ‘you’ problem, where you need to learn to trust others? Or is it a ‘them’ problem, where you need to improve your staff training and development program (you do have one of those, don’t you)?
And what have you learned about yourself, and what sort of goals work for you? Are you a ‘big challenge’ person, or ‘slow and steady improvement’?
So to summarise: set some time aside, ask yourself difficult questions, and be ruthlessly honest with your answers. Then you can start to plan your happy new year!
