4 Decisive Steps to Engage Team Members at the Start of the New Year

by Stephen Hobbs

Now that everyone is back to work for the start of the New Year, wouldn’t it be great to get everyone moving in the same direction?

It’s important you quickly refocus and remind the team members on what really matters to your organization of work.

Act on these four decisive steps to develop a new three-month work plan.

Action 1: Identify the outcomes of the group work from the last three months. That is:

• Step 1A… Review the factors involved in accomplishing the outcomes. Your reflection of contributing factors assists your learning about helpful practices.
• Step 1B… Determine what existing factors will influence future work. From what you learned about the previous contributing factors, figure out which ones you’ll carry forward as best and wise practices.

Action 2: Decide what needs to continue and stop from the old work. That is:

• Step 2A… Prioritize the old work that needs to continue moving forward. There is important work you must continue to do to maintain consistency and/or to meet ongoing client requirements.
• Step 2B… Identity the old work that needs to stop. More difficult, is to cut loose what is not helping you advance your organization of work.

Action 3: Identify the new work required and requested of the group. That is:

• Step 3A… Prioritize the new work you need to start moving forward. From a future perspective, what new work is required of the team as identified by the team and the clients in association with organization wide strategic initiatives?
• Step 3B… Determine new factors that may influence the new work. You can count on possible and unforeseen factors affecting the work. The more you know them, sense them the better for everyone.

Action 4: Combine the “continue-old work” with the “start-new work.” That is:

• Step 4A… Prioritize the combined work plan with timelines, measurements, accountabilities and responsibilities. Each of these additional features ensures relevance and attainability of the plan.
• Step 4B… Review the new work plan with several clients to determine feasibility of accomplishment. Their perspective adds insight to your final decision to move forward with the plan (or not).

Yes – you can follow these steps on your own and bring a report to the team. What is more impactful is to involve the team members. Have them individually complete the four steps. Then combine the individual work plans into a teamwork plan.

Following the steps you’ll learn what’s important to each person about what happened over the last three months and what they believe is important for the next three months. In addition you’ll have the opportunity to flex your mentor muscles.