The start of the New Year is naturally a time of reflection and planning: goals, intentions, and resolutions are on many peoples’ minds.
And when it comes to an agency – and really, any business – “resolutions” translate to “your plan.” With last year’s wild ride, your team more than ever wants to know “where we're going from here?”
You have a unique opportunity to take advantage of this period to focus their attention and provide your perspective on the business, to tell them: here’s what we learned last year, here’s how that's informed the business, and here’s our plan for this year.
In the absence of information, your team will fill in the gaps for themselves: an offhand comment gets taken to suggest a new direction; a lack of your leadership voice gets interpreted that the agency’s rudderless.
This isn’t to suggest you need to have all of the answers, but you do need to state your intentions, even if it's to "stay the course." But a plan is fluid and comes with the stipulation that it'll evolve as the year progresses. And most importantly, your message needs to provide the insight that only someone in your chair has: “here’s what I see from my vantage point.”
Call it a “State of the Agency” meeting, an “Annual Plan Presentation” or “The View From My Desk,” but you have until the end of January to harness the New Year’s energy to show you're on it, and to point your team in the direction needed to have a good year.