As we wrap up another year and start to think about our real plans and goals in 2017 I have been doing a lot of reading of year end “best of” lists, looking forward “trendspotting” lists, and a few “remember our goals last year” lists and the last category made me really think… mainly because there have only been a couple of them. So many lists at this time of year celebrating the “best of” what happened in 2016… so many companies and prognosticators talking about “what will happen” in 2017… and almost nobody talking about how the two aligned for the past 12 months.
Perhaps it isn’t surprising to see that very few people actually take their “plans and goals” from the start of the year and publish their results against those “wishes and dreams” lists that they published a year ago… it would after all require us to show some humility and acknowledgement for those things that didn’t go exactly as planned.
For me for example I didn’t start the year with a list of goals related to breaking out on my own, building a successful innovation consulting business, and creating value the leader of my own professional services organization. I started the year with big plans for how my team at BMO was going to continue to build innovative capabilities into the organization, delivery on major strategic enterprise initiatives, and grow as leaders together. I accomplished some of those plans and goals, but I didn’t predict being the subject of reorganization and deprioritization of the innovation portion of my team’s mandate – and the resulting change in my personal focus.
Maybe it’s not a bad idea to spend some time yourself thinking about what you “thought” would happen in 2016 and measuring your progress against your own goals. I can tell you that taking a few minutes to consider it myself was incredibly enlightening and empowering as I start to cement my goals for 2017.
Tim Empringham is a passionate advocate for Innovation in organizations of all sizes as a mechanism to drive growth, create uncontested market space, create new customer value, and drive efficiency into the internal organization. His focus is on disruption of thinking and markets through integrative thinking, structured Innovation frameworks, and leadership development of Innovation and Change leaders within the organization.