Be Strategic in December
The end of another year is just around the corner. Hard to believe, isn’t it?
For most of us, December means working hard to complete the year’s projects and making as much headway as we can before taking some time off for the holidays.
While jamming to get it all done is a worthy cause, there’s something just as important that can get lost in the shuffle: making time to celebrate the year’s accomplishments and learn from our successes, as well as our mistakes.
Try these 3 techniques for ending a year well.
1. Hold a Year-End Retrospective
A retrospective is a "lessons learned" meeting. It considers the following questions:
What worked well?
What didn’t work well?
What specific steps can we take to improve?
Instead of focusing on punishment or blame, effective retrospectives encourage objectivity, curiosity, and an open exchange of ideas. Need a little more guidance? Check out this video that takes you through five simple steps to holding a successful retrospective with your team.
If you want to dig in a little deeper, Victor Yocco at Smashing Magazine explains the benefits of taking stock of what works and what doesn’t, how to organize a retrospective, and how to best implement changes for coming projects. You might want to take a look at how popular sales platform Etsy uses blameless retrospectives to encourage employees to take risks and learn from their mistakes.
2. Start Building a "Learning Organization"
When you make a habit of reflecting, not only at the end of the year, but also at the end of a project, you can help create what Peter Senge—author of the seminal management book The 5th Discipline—calls a "Learning Organization." Instead of getting stuck in a mindset of "Well, we’ve always done it this way," Learning Organizations focus on problem solving, avoid personal blame, and stay agile in the face of adversity and change. They rise to the top, and are able to adapt for the long haul.
3. Take Time to Celebrate
You and your team worked hard this year, and you’re probably already thinking about what’s next. We’re all for ambitious goals, and there’s a time to celebrate those as well.
Bring your team together to truly celebrate your work this past year: not only the outcomes you hit, but the risks you took, the insights you leveraged, and the ways you learned to work more effectively together. Doing so is a great way to build connection, deepen your learning, and stoke the fires of motivation to keep going, even when things are hard.
Wishing you the best of luck as you wrap up your work—and learn from it, too—before year’s end! Let us know how your year-end reflections and celebrations go, and get in touch if you think organization could benefit from coaching or training in the coming year. We’re here to help.
Roni Krouzman and The People Piece team
We develop great leaders, managers, and teams