So the end of year is here. Hopefully, you had a great year, or you were at least able to get what I call another sandbox pass. That means you made enough to stay in business and play in the sandbox another day. What to do now? I recommend taking a few minutes to reflect and clean off your sand toys before digging into another year.

In 2003, the bottom fell out for us. We lost a bunch of work due to budget cuts. So when 2004 started, I was concerned about what the future held. I wanted to make a change, or at least, do all I could to rally the troops and get them to enjoy the year as much as possible. Based on the advice of a couple trusted friends, I did a few things that literally changed the way I now do business. I recommend incorporating the following ideas into your plan for the new year:

Take a full day (and a couple nights) to reflect on the year, look at your books, and think about your employees, office, and clients. Even if the company is just you, take the time.

- Make a Keynote presentation of the projects you are most proud of, and show it to the team. Talk about each project for a few minutes, reminisce about clients, tell funny stories, and share some things you learned. Also, make sure to choose at least one project per designer or team member to complement.

- Talk constructively about the mistakes you made, what you learned from them, and how to ensure they won’t happen again. Present new systems and/or checks and balances.

- Give each team member a chance to talk about their favorite moments. In fact, this year I distributed a pre-meeting questionnaire and asked everyone to write down their favorite moments, things they would change, etc. I then shared these at the meeting.

- Set goals for your company and share them. Make them legit, but present them in a fun way. This way you have a theme and benchmarks that they can keep in mind throughout the year. This has helped us big time when it comes to managing the team; there is no confusion about what the expectations are. Think of it as a vision statement!

- Plan a couple of group activities. Get some AIGA events on the calendar, take a trip to a museum, read a book together, etc. Do a couple things outside of the office if that works for your team.

- Take each one of your employees aside - even if you just have one - and discuss with them their salary, plus all the additional items the company pays for, i.e., Insurance, bonus, vacation, Fica, etc. This way they have some understanding of their entire compensation package. This also forces you to look at each employee while reviewing the year and helps you remember their growth, lack of growth, etc. Set some personal goals for them as well.

- Set goals for yourself that will help you be a better manager. Consider the things you didn’t do very well and figure out how you can do them better. Make sure your team knows these as well. For example: Communicate better, design more, work less, research more effectively.

- Create an advisory group. Pick about 3 people that you respect, and ask them to be available to you for advice. This is my fourth year meeting with my advisors, and they have been invaluable. I send them quarterly updates, seek their perspective on issues I’m struggling with, and get together with all of them for a once-a-year summit. Much like I do at the end of year employee meeting, I take the advisors though the highlights of the year, but I focus more on business issues like overhead, sales and future planning.

In summary, looking back at 2007, our eighth year of business, I realize that I do this because I love it. And even though you may think some of this is overkill, in the end, you are only as successful as you dare to dream. Plus, you can’t motivate for change or hold people responsible if you don’t celebrate your victories and learn from your missteps. So take the
time to enjoy your work, and do a little planning. And remember, the sandbox is only fun if you don’t mind digging in and getting dirty. Good luck!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 9th, 2008 at 3:07 pm and is filed under Design Careers. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.