Is it just me, or did 2025 fly by? The New Year is upon us, and it seems like a good time to pause for a moment to take stock of where we are and to set goals for the year ahead.
We are fortunate to live in a time when there is plenty of data available. Data can tell us a great deal about what we have achieved in the past year and guide our decision-making for the New Year.
The key to using data effectively is to ensure you are analyzing the right data and taking a holistic approach to your analysis. Hopefully, at this point, your data is not siloed across multiple systems but is consolidated and cleansed, giving you a very accurate view of your performance.
Spend time with your management team reviewing what went right in 2025—based on what the data is telling you, not on what your ‘gut’ says—and also discussing areas that need improvement. You might also want to pull some staff members into the analysis. Frontline workers often have valuable insights to share—especially about customer interactions.
Review your 2025 key performance indicators (KPIs) to determine how your performance measured up against the objectives you had set. The next step is to ask yourself whether those KPIs are still valid for the New Year, or whether you need to revise them or introduce new KPIs in other areas.
The New Year is also a good time to review policies and procedures to ensure you are operating as efficiently as possible. Identify bottlenecks that are slowing progress and reducing overall operating efficiency. Identify ways to eliminate bottlenecks to improve workflow.
Evaluate the technology solutions you are currently using. Technology changes rapidly, and you can’t afford to run your business with technology tools that are out of date. However, that does not necessarily mean you need every single one of the latest technology solutions. The point here is to evaluate the technology solutions you currently use to determine whether they meet your needs. If they are not, upgrade them and allocate time to train your staff to use the new technology effectively so you get the most out of it.
This is also a time to do a start-stop-continue exercise. It is a fairly simple exercise and consists of asking a few simple questions.
- What should we start doing that we are not already doing?
- What should we stop doing that we are currently doing?
- What should we continue doing?
This is something where you can involve a cross-section of staff members. When executed properly, the start-stop-continue exercise can lead to meaningful change because we tend to keep doing things we have always done without taking time to evaluate whether they are still necessary. This type of exercise stimulates innovation and creativity.
The end of one year and the beginning of the next are good times to reflect on successes and to look for ways to improve so that the New Year is even better than the one before.
