Reviewing 2013 and Planning for 2014 in a Meaningful Way
A Quiet Reflection of 2013
A good practice for Human Capital executives is to stop long enough to look back on the year and determine what you intended, what changed, and where you arrived.
I like to meet with my clients during fourth quarter budget planning to do this quiet thinking. We sit down together to review the year that has passed and examine the state of the company today. We look at what worked and what didn’t work, and what we learned from each success and each failure. It is a quiet time, often a reflective time. A meditation.
Effective Strategic Planning for 2014
Based on these insights, we can plan ahead.
We reflect on the business strategy and assess the organization’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats as it relates to the most critical phases in the talent lifecycle:
- Onboarding, integrating and developing new economy workers to ensure retention of a strong workforce
- Developing existing leaders to prepare them to move up through the organization, take on more responsibility, and guide the organization’s growth
- Planning for the succession of key positions by defining future-state roles and developing talent pipelines to succeed outgoing generations and ensure the company's ongoing success
From here we can set appropriate talent strategies and goals that will help drive and accelerate the results of the business strategy. We prioritize our objectives and initiatives for the upcoming year, what they will cost, whether we have the right resources, and how many steps it will take to implement these goals.
Once we have approved budgets for the New Year, we then go over the goals and initiatives that we outlined in our planning. We edit those goals to align with the budget we have been given, ensuring realistic expectations. The end result is that we are able to determine ways we can realistically and economically drive significant change in the business over the course of the next calendar year in order to achieve competitive advantage.
Some examples of goals you might consider setting for the upcoming year:
- Recruiting and retaining top talent in the face of increasing global talent shortages
- Improving the accountability, reliability and performance of younger workers
- Increasing the ownership and commitment to corporate goals of mid-level managers
- Developing leadership competencies among high potential employees at all levels
- Executing the smooth succession plans for outgoing leadership
- Empowering communication and productivity across all generations and business units
A Discipline with Lasting Results
This quiet review of the year and strategic planning for the next develops discipline and strategic oversight for the organization, and, over time, becomes knowledge. This is deep knowledge: of ourselves as Human Capital executives and practitioners, of the companies we serve, of the industries in which we work, and how all of this changes (or does not) over time, year after year.
Many times, resolutions in the New Year are made in haste, and thus are hard to keep. By contrast, this disciplined practice is built on careful consideration and appraisal. Participating in it also helps drive and advance thought leadership and professional development in the Human Capital field.
Amy Hirsh Robinson, MBA, is Principal of the Interchange Group and a leading expert on the impact of generational differences in the for-profit and not-for-profit workplace. She consults to C-level leaders on enterprise-wide strategies to reduce attrition costs, increase profitability and create agile workforces able to adapt to change. Amy is a popular speaker and author on the topic of attracting, retaining and managing top talent, and has been cited and quoted in publications such as Forbes, The Los Angeles Times, and the Huffington Post.