It’s a new quarter, and it’s a new year, but maybe you’re off to a rough start with accomplishing those tasks in your credit union strategic plan for 2023. Fires have popped up, and the urgent is taking priority over the important.
Here are three things you should do right now to make sure you don’t fall back into the hole of bad habits that keep you from success this year:
- Move on. It’s common for Q1 strategic priorities to take a back seat to the autopsy of failures from the previous year. By all means, DO IT! Make sure you look at what went wrong and plan ahead to avoid it, but don’t let it suck all of the air out of the room. Don’t let looking in the rearview mirror over-intrude into what is right in front of you now. Discuss it, learn from it, and get back to work on Q1.
- Don’t go back. When you start working on the tasks from your strategic plan, it’s going to make some of your team uncomfortable. Change isn’t comfortable for them, and there’s going to be a natural inclination to push back on what has already been approved and discussed. Or worse, arsonists who say they are on board but do everything they can behind your back to sabotage your strategic plan. As leaders, it’s your job to hold your team accountable for working on the strategic plan. That means high levels of quality communication with those who are getting outside of their comfort zone and dealing swiftly with any arsonists.
- Be ready to adjust. Not to appease the arsonists or coddle the uncomfortable but be flexible in adjusting your strategic plan when you encounter wrong assumptions. During strategic planning, you may have set strategies or goals on certain assumptions you find out may be a bit off or even totally incorrect. You’ve had time to gather data and gain perspective. The sooner you uncover this and deal with it, the more successful you will be when you reflect back at the end of the year.
“There’s plenty of time left.”
Those are the most disastrous words you can say at this point in Q1. You’ll repeat those words throughout the year until your next strategic planning session and find that you didn’t accomplish most of what you wanted or needed to accomplish. Feeling stuck? Not sure how to move forward? I’m just an email away
Get Un-Stuck!