As the year winds down, panic can begin to set in as you begin to think another year is going by without serious thought given to your 2016 planning. As with anything else of value, it isn’t going to get done unless you commit time, brain power and a serious level of importance to doing it.
There is still time to build the frame that you will hang your plans on. Sure, the year is winding down, and a holiday brain can take over if you let it. But you can get some meaningful plans in place before January. Here’s how:
- Ask your staff leaders to do a brain dump of all possible projects, changes in process and work flow that they can think of.
- Call a 90-minute to 2-hour meeting (buy them lunch and make it a working year-end lunch).
- Assign an estimated time and money budget, the team members who would work on them and an estimated impact to each as a group. (Don’t overthink this).
- Prioritize these items as a group by having each member vote.
- Create a new list of the prioritized projects and go over them with the group.
- Choose the top projects to address in first quarter.
BOOM! You have the framework of 2016 planning for the new first quarter. Set a date on the calendar to revisit the list two months from now. Sure, you could flesh this all out in a far more strategic and detailed way, but heck, when the end of the year is staring you in the eye—this is a solid way to know a sound direction in the months ahead.
