I obviously can’t make you do any of them, but if you do, you’ll change the trajectory of your organization in 2025.

• Question all the assumptions you’ve built your 2025 upon. Tomorrow, your best employee is going to show up ready to work. When you unlock the front door, customers will come in and buy the same things in the same volumes at the same price as they have for the past XX months or years. Suppliers will deliver the same raw materials on time with the same quality. Those might all seem like reasonable assumptions and they might be – but what if they’re wrong. What if there’s some seismic shift in the universe and one or more of those things don’t happen. All plans are built on assumptions. It’s a good exercise to periodically question them. You might find essential action items on people, vendors, messaging, customer retention, and more.
• Work with a coach or join a peer group. No one is lonelier than the boss and no one is under more pressure. It’s essential to have someone you can use as a sounding board. I’d certainly love it if you’d work with me, but make sure it’s somebody. The important thing is having someone who can commiserate and, from time to time, challenge your thinking, offer new and different perspectives, and hold you accountable.
• Grow your people. Give them the information they need to make decisions like you make decisions. Give them training to deliver a better customer experience. Give them tools to streamline work. Give them improved skills that will equip them for their next job in your organization. Show them how they can leave their mark in the organization. Give them opportunities that utilize skills they are not utilizing now. Show them a career path in the organization. Align their interests with the interests of the organization. Read more on growing your people.
• Make sure everyone understands “winning”. Inevitably, in a consulting engagement, I discover there’s disconnect between what’s important to the boss and what most employees think is important. Identify, track, and make visible the metrics that indicate what it means for your organization to win. Let everyone know that scoring well on these metrics means the organization is healthy and equipped for growth. Also let them know that when any of these metrics lag, it is the responsibility of everyone in the organization to “dive for the ball” and get that measurement back on track.
• Be deliberate about 1 or 2 big initiatives. For years, I had a sign in my office that read, “If you chase two rabbits, both will escape.” The sign is gone, but the truth remains. As you begin 2025, I’d suggest you pick one or two important initiatives that would make your organization healthier – they might be employee-facing, customer-facing, process-related, financial, or something else, but make it only one or two and let everyone in the organization know that for the next six months, these initiatives are going to happen no matter what. People can’t focus on ten improvements at the same time, but they can keep track of one or two.