Let’s Go!
The new year is around the corner and you are figuring out how to get your team fired up for the new year.
That’s great. But before you dive into new year planning, take some time to look back and savor your accomplishments from 2025.
You can do this in just a few hours. Look through your calendars. Come up with the top three accomplishments your team had for every month of 2025. What were the highlights? Who were the heroes? Celebrate these! Ideally you can have a celebratory lunch or dinner to really appreciate all of your accomplishments. Savor these for a few days.
Then – focus on 2026.
Set the three most important Strategic Goals that your team needs to accomplish in 2026. Use the following guidelines. If you already have the goals, use the guidelines to sharpen them up:
- Outcomes. Set your goals as outcomes – results – not activities you want to complete.
- Specific & Measurable. This is the only way to know if you are on track. If you have difficulty, try this book as a resource: Make Success Measurable.
- Aggressive. If you want to get even more innovative, try setting Almost Impossible goals like they do at Google. Learn more in this brief, free video.
- Relevant. What are the three most important goals you can set that will advance your larger organizational goals – as well as the vision and mission.
- Time Bound. Every goal must have a date.
- Outcome Milestones. Set at least four of these during the year to see if you are on track with your results – not your activities.
- SWOTs. People like to reserve SWOTs for strategy, but you can use them for each goal. What Strengths do you have that you can leverage to achieve the goal? What Weaknesses do you need to develop in order to achieve the goal? What Opportunities can you seize to help you accomplish the goal? What Threats do you need to keep an eye on so you are not derailed with the goal? This analysis can help you set your Action Plans.
Your review and savoring of 2025 will set a positive tone and build your team’s confidence. This will act as a springboard to catapult you into setting and accomplishing your 2026 goals. Good luck making a Mission Impact in 2026!
Note: There will be no Insights With Impact blog on December 30, 2025. Enjoy savoring some time off!
