It’s hard to believe, but we’re in the second half of 2024. Many of us do end-of-year reviews of our business goals and accomplishments, but how many of us stop to do those things mid-year?
As basic as this sounds, most people don’t. But those who achieve their goals often do. Highly goal-oriented people tend to be very focused and regularly review their progress. As the saying goes, “You get what you expect when you inspect with regularity.”
If we want to meet our goals, we need to regularly review our progress. That’s why there is great value in stepping back at this time of the year to review the first six months. This will not only help us feel good about our accomplishments but help us stay focused on what we need to do to stay on track.
5 Actions to Take Mid-Year
Here are five actions you can take to exert leadership over yourself, your area of responsibility, and/or your company. When you complete this exercise, I recommend taking out a sheet of paper and creating several columns (this is what I do, myself):
- 2024 Goals
- Where I am now
- What went well
- What could have gone better
- Areas to refocus
This is simply an objective review of your progress for 2024. Are you where you expected to be? Why or why not? If we know what went well, we can pat ourselves on the back and feel good about the progress we made. Then we can leverage that as fuel for doing more of the same the rest of the year in order to get where we want to be.
Don’t be afraid of your “what could have been better” column. We all probably have areas and goals where we have come up short so far this year, and it’s important to review these by writing them down. We cannot change what happened in the past, but we can learn from it and move forward and make progress toward our goals for the rest of the year.
Once we have written down where we are versus our goals, we are ready to decide where we need to refocus our efforts. Write down things you want to change going forward that will carry you toward your goal.
Create a “Go Forward” Plan
Finally, create a “go forward” plan. Write down the specific actions you must take, with dates for accomplishing each step of the plan. In doing so, you will generate a vision and understanding of how you need to spend your days for the rest of the year.
The key here is “specific.” The more specific you can be, the more likely it is that you will reach your goals.
If you just say, “I want to increase my company’s sales by 10%,” that’s a great goal, but how are you going to achieve it? But if you say, “I want to send my salespeople to at least one trade show, introduce them to new products, and help them cross-sell existing products into new markets,” that gives you something concrete to work with. When your goals are concrete, you have a much better chance at achieving them.
Doing a mid-year review and realignment of your goals is an extremely important step to stay on track. It gives each one of us the opportunity to see what took us off track, feel good about our progress, and refocus our efforts to create our “go forward” plan for the rest of the year.
Got your mid-year review on the calendar?
