The last 2 weeks have probably seen us watching more news than we ever have before, so I know I probably don’t need an update on anything in that regard. Instead, for this week’s post the focus will be on a valuable end of quarter exercise that I like to invest at least some dedicated time to. This quarter end will be no different.
Yes, there will continue to be a large reactive aspect to everyone’s world, to manage cashflow, be solution oriented and try to add value and be helpful in what virtual ways we can. However, we must also do what we can to stay connected to our vision, and reviewing a logical time period like the previous quarter is a great way to do that. In amongst all of the uncertainty and reactive challenges we face, not to mention our new normality of home lockdown, it could be easy to lose our way or fall into a mental fog with no direction. I think it’s particularly important in a time like this to acknowledge our progress in 2020 so far and reassess our direction moving forwards.
**Before I continue though I just wanted to give a massive shout out to all those in the NHS, our volunteers, our supermarket teams and all those in the supply chain keeping our country supplied with food.**
Reviewing each month and quarter is about investing past experience into future preparation and focus – ie your past decisions, successes, failures, lessons. That’s where the good stuff comes from.
Here are a selection of questions, I learned from Peter Voogd, that I’ve been using for a couple of years to help reflect on the previous quarter can carry on with momentum. Use these prompt questions to help you reflect and free flow write for 30 mins or so each quarter about the previous 90 days. [By the way, I used the accountability of writing this post to get my own review done before hitting publish and it does only take about 30 mins].
Section #1 – OVERVIEW
- What went well, what didn’t?
- When was I in my zone, when wasn’t I?
- When was I at my emotional energy peak?
- What caused me peace of mind?
- What frustrated me?
- Did I do what I said I was going to do?
- What systems have I put in place?
Section #2 – PSYCHOLOGICAL
- What have been my biggest breakthroughs?
- What have been my biggest frustrations?
- What have been my mind-shifts?
- What have been my biggest disappointments?
Section #3 – TACTICS
This section looks at what were my top 5 wins from last quarter: financial, family, adventure…?
Getting down to business metrics ask yourself:
- Did I hit my business income goal last quarter?
- What were the top three marketing campaigns or sources of income last month?
- What were my top income producing activities?
- What are the biggest ways I’ll be producing income this next month?
- How did I add value to the marketplace, could I have added more?
These will likely be related to your highest values but only you will know.
- Did I leverage technology?
- Did I maximise my reach?
- What will exponentially grow my reach this next quarter?
- What did I do to stay adventurous and feel fully alive?
To help keep you going with the nitty gritty march of each day it’s important to mix it with the things that energise you. In previous quarters this would have included things like getting in a game of tennis once a week, or maybe a mini break with Mrs W. For those with freedom in their highest values this will be particularly important, however it will be massively challenged in weeks ahead with our foreseeable lockdown. We will all need to be creative about what little things we can do from home to create mini rewards during the month. If you have a garden perhaps you will find a new love for gardening a few times a week, or it may be a new found simple pleasure of making time for a relaxing bath. Whatever it is, choose something and schedule it.
If you aren’t consciously making a decision to put things in your diary that will keep you alive and vibrant, even in these times of lockdown, you will become complacent.
Section #4 – RELATIONSHIPS
I love this one:
- Who did I connect with and reach out to last quarter?
- Did I take care of my current relationships and did I reach out to people who can cut my learning curve in half- i.e. people who I can partner with in some way that’s relevant to your business?
- Did I leverage partnerships?
To add to this, based on what’s currently happening, who can you make a conscious effort to connect/reconnect with virtually in the months ahead. My wife and I are actively engaging in more family and friend video calls based around coffee mornings or drinks evenings, and we’re really enjoying it. Tools like zoom and the phone app Houseparty have been helping with this.
Section #5 – TEAM
Think about questions that will help with your team review:
- How was my team engagement?
- How was my speed of communication?
- What feedback can I give them?
- What do they need in terms of skill development?
If you have a team, what can you do to help assure and engage them in during these uncertain times.
Section #6 – LEGACY
- What did I work on that was legacy focused? In other words something that you work on now but won’t get paid until long into the future, or something that you don’t reap the benefits for until way later, ie creating things that you value but that you get paid 6 months or more down the road. Note that if you just do this kind of work for the rewards/benefits you will lose steam, it’s important to engage in legacy work for other reasons, for something bigger than you. As a side example, part of my family legacy work last year and ongoing now is taking conscious time with my boys to teach them one key life value each month.
Voogd recommends spending 80% of your time on profit making activity, creating systems etc that makes sure you have the money coming in for you and your family now. Then 20% of your time on legacy focused things. Eventually when you have built the business you want you can switch focus to investing 80% of your time on the legacy side of things. Isn’t that an exciting prospect? To spend 80% of your time on something that helps a cause you believe in or adds value to the world in some way, and not worry whether it pays you or not.
Conclusion
I challenge you to invest 30 mins each quarter to do this. WHY? Because high achievers always ask better questions, and they are always investing their past mistakes/lessons into their future preparation.
WHAT ABOUT THE SPRING CLEAN BIT?
OK, I know this is a long post so well done if you’re still reading. Here are a few prompts to help with a spring clean [I’ll be allocating some time to these over the coming 2 weeks].
YOUR BUSINESS SYSTEMS
Audit your processes and operations in five key areas:
*Communication – ie your email processes, templates, filing etc
*Project Management – do a hard pruning of your task management system
*Documents and Data Storage
*Finances – can you simplify what key data points you are tracking/reporting on
*Customer TouchPoints – ie invoices, contracts, marketing etc
For all the above, ask the question: “How can we make this better?”
Whether you worked from home previously or not, now you’ll want to create an environment that is set to support the high-performance of your spring forward momentum.
Schedule a time to declutter, organise, and prune around your entire home office:
*Desks
*File drawers
*Shelves
*Computer desktop
*Computer folders
*Cloud-based folders
*Project management system
If you have any practices you’d like to share on how you review your quarters and/or transition into spring then please share it.