Hello 2024! At Collective Results, we are looking forward to working on some amazing projects with our clients this year! With the start of the new year, we are also taking some time to reflect on last year’s accomplishments, the great relationships that we have fostered and what we want the next year to look like. A highlight of 2024 for the CR team will be the implementation of our new strategic plan. We have already started to develop the activities that will make the strategic plan a reality and are currently working to figure out how to measure our progress and performance. At a recent team retreat, we played around with the similarities between a new strategic plan and new year’s resolutions. Every new year many of us follow the tradition of setting resolutions, some ambitious and specific, and others less so, but always with the intent of encouraging positive change and personal growth. We want to improve something, start another and be sure to keep doing what we do well. Sound familiar? The challenge with strategic plans, like new year’s resolutions, is not only making them happen but also measuring how much and how well you have done. What if, instead of viewing new year’s resolutions as personal promises or overwhelming goals, we saw them as a training ground for mastering the development of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)? Using the activity below, you can explore how thinking about new year’s resolutions as KPIs can serve as valuable practice in developing and achieving strategic KPIs.
Here’s a quick warm-up activity that you can do with your team to start practising developing KPIs:
1.Take a few minutes to think about your New Year’s Resolutions from last year or ones that you would like to make for this year (2024)
2. Make a list of 1-2 resolutions
3. Now reflect on what would tell you that you have successfully achieved this resolution? How would you know? Spell it out…
4. Re-state/refine your answer(s) to the previous question so that your measure of success:
a. Is clearly defined (so another person would understand it)
b. Can be measured at the end of the year (assuming your goal is over the year)
c. Can be compared over time
d. Tells you (or will tell you) whether the effort made any difference, had any impact
5. If working in a group or team, pair up with another person and share your reflections and what stood out.
Need help setting or developing KPIs? Collective Results has created an intuitive and effective KPI development process to measure progress and performance of strategic plans, projects, programs, teams, etc. Please reach out to us to learn more about Collective Results and how we can support your work!