We are in December, which officially represents the end of the year, there is no doubt about it. And even if you have managed to save 2024 or not, a topic that I have already discussed before, you must have started thinking about planning for 2025. Ideally, you have already started, but regardless of where you are in this process, I will help you with some points that you should consider.
The first thing I recommend you do may seem simple at first, but few people do this exercise in the right way: learn from what happened over the past year to really understand what actually worked and especially what went wrong.So obvious, is not it? However, what I see most are companies refusing to do this.
The fact is that when people do not refuse to look back, they make this assessment quickly and poorly. After all, they think it is easier to let the boat run. Even what worked ends up not being used to consolidate some of these good practices, we just celebrate and ready. That is, we lost the opportunity to learn both what worked and what definitely does not work.
To know where the errors are, we need to know the details of the executions, but we know that a manager, faced with so many tasks, often can not be aware of absolutely everything, so nothing better than hearing the opinion of employees about what was done during the year, because they are on the front line. The team needs to be playing together in the construction of ideas, otherwise, this is already a point to be fixed.
The big problem is that when we do not realize or worse, we do not accept that it went wrong, we end up persisting in something that does not go forward and probably has no future. It is as if we are punching at the tip of a knife. And starting a new year with this mentality is not something good for you and much less for your business, which needs consistent planning.
For this reason, if your company does not yet use OKRs (Key Objectives and Key Results) - OKRs (Key Objectives and Results) -, maybe the perfect time has come to implement. However, be very careful, OKRs are not just an Excel spreadsheet that you follow and give a check the tool requires a precise implementation for it to really work.
Look closely at the data that is available: what do the metrics tell you? Why certain actions did not achieve the expected result? Did planning not go away? The hypotheses were not validated?The team tried, tried, but went in the wrong direction? Are many questions that may arise at this time, but looking at the well-built OKRs facilitates this work of generating learning.
Therefore, when planning for 2025, instead of thinking of a single annual cycle, keep in mind to repeat this process every quarter, because one of the premises of the tool are short cycles, which allow you to recalculate the route faster, without losing sight of the medium and long term. In this way, you will accelerate the learning process of your organization and create a more structured plan for the next year.
What should I consider when making a plan for 2025?
