Take Time to Reflect

Of course, as the year draws to a close, you’ll not have checked off all the boxes in the to do list.

There will be prospects that were not converted, customers that may have moved on, product launches may have fizzled out, projects may have gotten side tracked. In business there are many variables that can cause targets from converting your plans into reality.

The easy part is to beat yourself up about it and to chew out your team on lost opportunities. The hard part, and the one you want to master, is to take a step back and analyze what went wrong with those opportunities. What could you and your team have done better? What part of the process did you get wrong? And more importantly how can you fix them?

Sit with your team and discuss the lost opportunities. Discuss in an atmosphere that encourages openness and sharing. The aim is to improve as a team and not to fix blame on an individual. Never let this get personal. As soon as you let that happen, the problem solving goes out of the window and all you are left with is a mud-slinging contest. The result is never pretty, and you end up having no solution, frayed relationships within the team and a whole lot of time wasted.

There could be simple fixes that could be applied or there could be complex issues behind the problem. As you work together as a team to sell your products, work as a team to discover your shortcomings.

Once you have identified what it is you want to fix, find out how that can be done. Sometimes the solutions will come from within the group or from within the company. At other times you may need outside help. Identify how you want to fix the issue and then look for a solution.

You may also want to discuss and fix a timeline on when the gap gets closed. Keeping the issue open may result in you and your team sitting together next year discussing the same thing.

Create timelines for keeping yourself and your team on track.

Assign ownership for the projects and processes that need to be fixed. This will not only keep the projects on track, it will also ensure that you can give opportunities to your team members to apply their skills as leaders and coordinators which will help them grow.

Use every opportunity, even a lost one, into growing yourself, your team and your company into a better one.