Make a fresh start

by Amila Muthukutti

This is the New Year season which we celebrate on a grand scale. Undoubtedly, you would have been bombarded with plenty of New Year messages wishing you in different ways. You will continue to receive New Year wishes at least for another week or so.

Those are others' wishes to you. However, you must have your own plans to make a real change in your life, lives of your employees and your business organisation. You are accustomed to set personal and business plans at the beginning of almost every New Year.

However, how many targets were achieved in the past year is an important question which you ought to ask yourself. Once you answer the question, you will surely identify some failures which you experienced in the past year.

Hence, it is important to look into some factors which actually made you fail in the past year, so that you will achieve a majority of your targets this year.

Courage

"Why do people give up New Year's resolutions halfway?' is a significant question to ask. We, as business people, want to increase sales, make more profits, introduce new products to the market and maximise our shareholders' wealth.

Nevertheless, you may have not performed as expected. It may be due to the reason that people become discouraged, once results do not come quickly and easily. We can never predict the market and its behaviour. We have to be patient to achieve success.

Even though people are determined at the time when goals are set, they gradually abandon their courage to pursue goals. When you have to face challenges and fail at some point, you jump the gun to define you are weak. Due to lack of courage, people abandon their goals halfway.

Right strategy

Some people who do not follow right strategies are unable to reach their goals. You ought to have right knowledge and experience to make right decisions and right strategies leading to better outcomes. You have to be keen on improving yourself by sharpening your skills to use right strategies for achieving personal growth and business growth.

Perhaps, you still use traditional sources to improve yourself. Hence, it is time to look beyond conventional knowledge sources. This will result in right strategies.

Life style

Your life style has an impact on your performance and success. How you dress, behave and how healthy your social contacts are, can shape your life style positively and negatively. Some people following right strategies and working hard fail. Let’s find out why.

How you talk with your employees or your customers can decide whether you are going to achieve your goals or not. If you can identify some wrongs with your life style, focus on finding alternatives.

Right track

A majority of those that start pursuing goals, do not continue it. When they face challenges, they are out of the track. To avoid this, people write down resolutions on paper, to review the progress of achieving targets.

Writing down key objectives you hope to meet this year helps you remain focused and acts as a reminder of the resolutions. Even though people make a fresh start, they become less enthusiastic soon. Hence, it is important to measure the progress that has been achieved so far.

This helps to make sure that you are on the right track.

The New Year is a possible turning point that can be used to make some changes in your business organisation.

Although changes are made somewhere else, it is you who decides on the changes. Every simple difference which every employee makes contributes to the success of the business.

Hence, put out your targets, so that all the employees can easily notice. Take the New Year as a platform to expedite your personal and business growth. The first step is ‘make a fresh start'.

The writer holds a BA in Economics from the University of Colombo.