The Spirit Of Christmas Future (With Apologies To Charles Dickens)

The Christmas Season is coming to its climax, business is as it is. You’ve either had a good, modest, or poor run up to Christmas but there’s not much more you can do to change that.

You had to decide if you refer to "Seasons Greetings” to give a nod to people of all faiths and none or gone traditional and wished people a “Merry Christmas".

The next thing in either case is to wish people a “Happy New Year.”

Once you’ve eaten your Christmas dinner, exchanged gifts, had a few festive drinks, and settled down to relax, you should take a few days to recover and re-energise.

But, if you’re like me, you can’t relax until you’re ready for what’s next and your mind will start considering the new year.

2022 has been a tough year for everyone, it started with the stresses from the Covid pandemic, the growing energy crisis and, to top it all off, the war in Ukraine and all the impacts on the cost of living. Hopefully, you have some positive memories from the year, but I suspect many people will be pleased to see the back of it.

So now it’s time to start thinking about the future, 2023.

When you have put Christmas behind you and you are ready to plan for the coming year, you might want to think about a planning framework such as the following:

Situation Analysis – where are we now?
Direction – where do we want to be?
Alignment – how will we get there?
Execution – who must do what?
Evaluation – how are we doing?

There are tools like SWOT and PESTEL to help and great business thinkers like Michael Porter with his 'five forces of competitive competition' and the wisdom of GE’s Jack Welch who are always good for helpful quotes, but you need to be clear on the challenges and opportunities you can expect and plan for success.

Don’t try to do it all yourself, get people with different experiences and perspectives to help you. Look for diverse thinkers, with a mix of gender, ethnic background, and all age groups for a complete overview. It can be time consuming, but it will be effort well spent.

Most of us have three year or five-year plans, you may be at the beginning, part way through or coming to the end of this planning cycle. There are virtues to sticking to a plan but there’s also a benefit to being agile.

The forecasts for the new year are worrying, recession, no end to the Ukraine war in sight, and a looming “winter of discontent’ overall a gloomy prospect.

Economist John Maynard Keynes is reputed to have said “When the facts change, I change my mind - what do you do?”

Forecasting helps to set goals and plan. Having accurate data and statistics to analyse helps businesses to decide what amount of change, growth or improvement will be determined as a success.

However, if we look back to 2019, nobody forecast the pandemic, the energy crisis, or the Ukraine war. Forecasts can be valuable, but you need to be aware of changes.

There’s an adage in the military that 'no battle plan survives first contact with the enemy.' Mike Tyson, not known as a great thinker, but his notorious quotation, “everyone has a plan 'till they get punched in the mouth” is full of wisdom.

This isn’t a reason not to plan, quite the opposite but it’s a reminder to be agile and when the circumstances change you need to adjust your strategy.

Happy Christmas and a successful 2023