Businesses should have New Year’s resolutions too

IT’S STILL January and businesses can still catch up to make resolutions to do better business this year. Here are some good reasons why companies should have their own New Year’s resolutions.

New Year symbolizes fresh start and new hope. We look forward to something bigger and we resolve to make another year better than the previous ones. At least, we do this for our selves but have we thought of doing this for our businesses?

Having New Year’s resolutions for our business — whether it be a large enterprise, a medium scale business, or a start-up — will help us navigate the next twelve months with clarity and purpose. And just like our personal resolutions, our to-be-better list for 2016 must be specific, realistic, and achievable.

Fresh start

It is believed that the practice of setting New Year’s resolutions dates as early as the Babylonian times. It is also said that the Roman Emperor Julius Caesar established the tradition of making resolutions on the first day of January in honor of Janus who is represented by two faces that allows him to look back into the past year and forward to the new year.

According to psychologists, making a list at the beginning of the year helps us get to our goals closer. One study showed that fifty percent of the individual subjects who made resolutions were successful compared to four percent who wanted to achieve a certain goal and considered it but did not actually create a resolution.

The University of Scranton Journal of Clinical Psychology affirms that people who explicitly make resolutions are ten times more likely to attain their goals than people who don’t explicitly make them.

Business impact

Creating a list of New Year resolutions will allow us to approach the symbolic new beginning with a clear vision of what is going to happen. It will allow us to chart new territories to conquer and it gives us the chance to lay the game plan well.

Let’s call this list our new year’s business plan. Using this list, let us explicitly determine where we want to go, and what we want to be. Let us be honest, practical, and realistic, but never set our goals low. Let us resolve to be better than where we were in the past year.

Having a to-do-list for the year will allow our businesses to consider all fronts of the battlefield. What kind of resources do we need? How will we tackle competition? What will be our success metrics? Do we need plan B?

Let us make our business’ New Year’s resolution our strategic and operating guideline, let it help us take control of things so we may grow our markets, cut cost, fortify our team, or further enhance our brand equity.

What to resolve

Some of the goals that we may wish to consider include being people focused, becoming a responsible corporate citizen, building a fair and solid relationship with all stakeholders, becoming environmentally responsible, and of course growing further.

We may also wish to put heavier emphasis on polishing our product’s quality or delivering exemplary customer service. Benchmark with the best — or better yet be the best.

As 2016 is seen to be the year of tougher competition coming from all fronts and cross beyond borders, let us resolve to be more competitive. Think global and act local.

And let us resolve to not forget to think big.