We are in December, what officially represents the end of the year, there is no doubt about that. And even if you managed to save 2024 or not, topic that I have already discussed before, you must have started thinking about the planning for 2025. The ideal is that it has already started, but independent of where you are in this process, I will help you with some points that you should consider
The first thing I recommend you do may seem simple at first, but few people do this exercise the right way: learning from what happened over the past year to truly understand what actually worked and especially what went wrong. Kind of obvious, isn't it? However, what I see most are companies refusing to do this
The fact is that when people do not refuse to look back, they make this assessment quickly and poorly done. After all, they think it's easier to let the boat run. Even what went well ends up not being used to consolidate any of these good practices, we just celebrate and that's it. That is to say, we lost the opportunity to learn both from what worked and from what definitely does not work
To know where the mistakes are, we need to know the details of the executions, but we know that a manager, in the face of so many tasks, many times one cannot be aware of absolutely everything, so there's nothing better than hearing the employees' opinions about what was done during the year, because they are on the front line. The team needs to be playing together in the construction of ideas, otherwise, this is already a point to be fixed
The big problem is that when we don't realize or worse, we do not accept that it went wrong, we ended up persisting in something that is not moving forward and probably has no future. It's like we're hitting a knife's edge. Starting a new year with this mindset is not good for you and even less for your business, that needs consistent planning
For this reason, if your company does not yet use OKRs – Objectives and Key Results -, maybe the perfect time has come to implement. However, be very careful, the OKRs are not just an Excel spreadsheet that you follow and give acheckin what was completed. The tool requires a precise implementation for it to really work
Look closely at the available data: what do the metrics tell you? Why certain actions did not achieve the expected result? Was there a lack of planning? The hypotheses were not validated? The team tried, tried, but it was in the wrong direction? There are many questions that may arise at this moment, but looking at well-constructed OKRs makes this work of generating learning easier
Therefore, when planning for 2025, instead of thinking about a single annual cycle, keep in mind to repeat this process every quarter, because one of the premises of the tool is short cycles, that allow recalculating the route more quickly, without losing sight of the medium and long term. In this way, you will accelerate your organization's learning process and create a more structured plan for the next year
What should I consider when making a plan for 2025
