Are you a resolutions person?

I’m not a big fan of resolutions. It seems they are just another way to procrastinate what you should have done days, weeks, months, or even years ago. What I prefer to do to celebrate a new year is to evaluate, reinvent, and re-energize my focus and attention. How do I do that?

1. Objectively evaluate the significant wins, loses, successes, and disappointments and assign blame. I don’t know about you, but I seem to find that I typically own my loses and wins, but give responsibility for my wins and successes to others. Sometimes this is a team of people; sometimes, it is a single person.
2. Quickly look at what opportunities and threats, I will face in the new year and what I see as my strengths and weaknesses to be. Yes, this is a personal SWOT analysis. With eyes wide open, I try to:
   1. Align my strength’s abilities to sustain through the threats
   2. Determine what strengths are appropriate to leverage my opportunities properly
   3. Understand how I can make my weaknesses less of a barrier to my success.
3. Build my tactical plan on how to operationalize the strategies I’ve acknowledged in step 2. Operationalizing your strategy is a process of
   1. Identifying what steps I will take for change those habits and behaviors that show up as weaknesses
   2. Determining what resources or learning I need to embrace to become a better me
   3. Seeking the mentor or coach who can keep me on task and focused on my personal and professional improvement
4. Timeline these tactics with deadlines. These deadlines I will share with my coach/mentor and other business associates that will help me stay on course to continual improvement.

A career is a “hero’s journey,” and on that journey, we will need allies, people who believe in us and are willing to invest in us their trust, mentorship, and support.

Make 2020 a fantastic year!