Do you believe in New Years resolutions? What are yours this year?

I love hearing the responses to these questions. In my oh-so-scientific studies over the years, I’d say most people refuse to make any NY resolutions because of the also-so-scientific-statistical data on NY resolution failure. They think they’ll be happier if they don’t set themselves up for disappointment by setting goals they might not achieve.

I can’t help but think about vision/strategy/goal setting processes in most businesses. Many people object to going through individual goal setting or group strategic planning exercises, usually for one of the following reasons:
1) It is a waste of time because everything gets reprioritized anyway.
2) We don’t want morale to drop if we set goals and don’t achieve them.

Well, I think that’s bunk. However you do it, whenever you do it, setting a vision (or goals or resolutions or whatever you want to call it) is the most surefire way to success. That’s why I’m a strategy consultant. It is why I love facilitating meetings to help people build vision and prioritize objectives. And why I love building those beautiful presentations that help everyone agree on their strategy and get inspired to make it happen. I truly believe for organizations and individuals, getting clear on vision is the key to getting what you want.

I’ve set a lot of goals in my life, personally and professionally. I’ve also missed few of them along the way. But the process of thinking about what I wanted and constantly going for it is what has gotten me where I am today.

Now, I’m in an interesting place.  Last year, I realized so many of my possibilities: success with the company, publishing our book, getting married and having a baby. While in a space of so much gratitude, I am wondering what is next… because I know if I don’t create more vision, I won’t keep moving forward. And I might even move backwards.

I spent some time last week while on vacation thinking about all this and getting it on paper. I won’t go through all the details, but there are a couple goals I wanted to share with you all, my blog readers.

First, I’m re-committing to my social networking goals, beginning with Twitter. Twitter continues to be an area of discomfort and honestly a little skepticism for me, but I am intrigued about its ability to connect us in new ways. I was on and off through last year and I’ve had several people convince me that it is a mind-shift at first, but once you are on, it is a new cool way of being connected. I’m going to treat this one like a 21 day habit and see where it goes from there.

Second, I’m going to be gearing more of my writing and presenting to “impact” – specifically how strategies can impact companies. Impact is TE’s third core value (after the more obvious two of Thought and Ensemble) and even though it is the whole reason we are around, we don’t talk about it enough. I get that not everyone is inspired by strategy, believing that if you build it, success will come. Some people want more real examples We’ve also gotten feedback from Reboot book readers and presentation attendees that while they find the problems laid on in the book compelling and the solutions insightful, but they want more specifics of what to go do and success stories from companies who have had positive impacts.

So there you have it: written down for the world to see.   The closest thing I have to NY resolutions.  Now, time to get to it!