2014 Midyear Evaluation
December 16, 2014
I’m sure you’ve heard of “Christmas in July,” right? Well, it’s obviously July so I wanted to provide you a “gift” for summer Christmas! Often times we begin the year with fresh perspectives and aggressive goals and dreams for the upcoming twelve months. This article is meant as a consultation to strengthen your business at the years halfway point. There’s no better time than right now to take a step back and reflect on what the first half of 2014 has done for your life and your business. Year-end celebrations or lamentations can be determined by these mid-year adjustments.
The traditional year-end appraisal of life and business, followed by the New Year’s resolutions to bring change, is appropriate. But in our culture, one time per year evaluations are not sufficient to keep pace with changing information and technology – so much of which our businesses depend on. Attitudes within the workforce can also go awry in a few short months, making a thorough look at the company paramount to maintaining its health and keeping it in focus.
This is a good time of year to do both a personal as well as a professional evaluation relative to the long-term purposes and our first of the year resolutions. Let me start by provoking your thinking with these 10 pithy thought stimulators.
1. Making decisions of resolve is much easier than following through with them.
2. How you finish is much more important than how you started.
3. Long distance runners have a reserve of energy for the end of the race.
4. Your business is not a sprint; it is a marathon.
5. Getting a read on the current times and knowing how to make adjustments mid-stream is ALWAYS the mark of a long-term survivor and a successful winner.
6. Change is the only constant in life. Don’t fixate on what your plan WAS; focus on what must be done NOW!
7. The time between your discovery of what needs to be adjusted and your adjusting it is the time your competition is using to gain an advantage over you.
8. Knowing what to do is not the same as having the will to do it. You must have both.
9. Longer hours, less sleep, and more meetings are rarely a solution; usually the answer is found in better planning, further training, better hiring practices, and a re-commitment to the core values of the company.
10. The time you take to plan your day is usually the best time you can spend on your business.
Now that our brains are moving in the right direction for our mid-year eval, allow me to pose the following questions to you:
1. Have you evaluated your staff? Generally there are 3 groups in each staff. The top 20% performers who produce 80% of the business gains. The middle 60% who pull their own weight but have room for improvement. Then the bottom 20% who are riding on the output of the other 80% and are acting as a boat anchor, dragging your business.
2. Have you classified, evaluated, and categorized every employee, including yourself and your top team?
3. Have you considered bringing in an outside consultant to complete a personnel audit so that you can compare your own personnel audit with theirs? This can be real revelation to a boss, and I highly recommend it.
4. What are you going to do to cull the bottom 20% and eliminate those who will not change…yet help those who want to change but need your leadership to do so?
5. What are you doing to grow both personally and professionally? Stagnant leadership is a prime culprit for failure in business.
6. What are you doing to acknowledge and reward that top 20% for the success that they are bringing to the company?
7. What are the top factors on your radar screen over the past 6 months that have affected your business growth? Financing? Personnel problems? Maintenance issues? Inventory control? Quality Control issues? Overhead costs? Technology issues? Can you develop a strategy with your team to counter each of these factors? If not, what is your plan?
8. Lastly, don’t neglect your family. Summer can be a healing time for frazzled families who run hectic schedules during the school year. Many busy families are hindered by good things that restrict the quality time needed to build a strong home. Remember: you’ll never get a second chance to rear the family you have now!
I’d love to hear from some of our readers about their mid-year evaluations. Email me at info@andrewcordle.com and tell me some of your discoveries, surprises, and what you are doing to confront them successfully. I am hoping that a few days of careful observation and adjustment now bring you great rewards at the year’s end!
Here’s to a successful second half!
