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Mid-Year Review & Reset - Getting Your Business Back on Track
Every business owner starts out the new year with grand ideas. Whether your goals included rapid growth month over month, or just a more sustainable way of working that featured plenty of days off, you might not quite be experiencing the success you had envisioned.
But that’s okay. There’s always time to make adjustments and fine-tune your small business to inch closer to your objective. This post is going to break down how you can use a mid-year review and reset process to figure out what is working, what’s not, and how to make more progress on the things that matter.
Start with an Objective Review
This is where it all begins. You can’t know what changes are necessary without first knowing how you are doing. Most likely, you are on track to reach some of your yearly goals, while others aren’t going so well. Now is the time to see things for what they are, rather than what you hoped they would become when the year started.
The review can start with basic business fundamentals like revenues and expenses. If you find that your revenues are down while expenses are up, things obviously haven’t gone to plan. In addition to those core numbers, you can also think more generally about the direction of your operation. Here are a few questions to ask yourself during the review:
- Are you closer to the kind of business that you want to be running than you were at the start of the year?
- Has your workload increased without a corresponding increase in revenue?
- Do you feel like you are spending more time on activities that genuinely move the business forward?
The most important part of this review is being honest with yourself. It might be hard at times to confront things you don’t like about how the year is going, but that honesty is what will set you up for big improvements over the next few months.
Take Time to Celebrate What Is Working
Don’t fall into the trap of only focusing on the negative while reviewing the first half of your year. Sure, you might not be hitting on every one of your objectives, but it’s likely that some progress has been made. Look at those wins and allow yourself to feel good about what you have accomplished.
In addition to having a moment of pride, you can also learn lessons from your successes. Do you see any patterns in what is going right? Perhaps you’ve been doing well with a particular type of customer, or with a specific product or service. This progress can feel good and it can tell you what to lean into moving forward. After all, if something is working, the best possible thing you can do for your business is simply to do more of that thing.
Be Intentional About Problem Solving
By this point, you should have a pretty clear picture of what has transpired over the first six months of the year. You’ve identified some things that are going well, and you have been honest with yourself about what isn’t working just yet. Of course, if you keep doing the same things, you can expect the same results. So, now is the time to intentionally make changes to address the areas that are coming up short.
At this point, you have two basic options to solve the problems you are facing. One option is to abandon certain goals you set at the start of the year. The other is to change your approach to how you pursue those goals. In most cases, it’s a combination of these two that will prove most effective in the end.
Pick out one or two goals you set at the start of the year that are far off from where you thought they would be. Do you still think these are attainable, or is it time to toss them out entirely?
Don’t view throwing out a given goal as a “failure”. Business owners set goals all the time and not all of them are going to work out. You are better off moving to a new goal than continuing to chase something that simply isn’t going to happen. With unreachable goals or objectives thrown out, you can now focus on changing your approach to the remaining targets that you still feel are within reach.
Perform a Hard Reset on Expectations
You don’t have to view what remains of the year as a desperate rush to cram in everything that you didn’t accomplish in the first half. In fact, that mindset is only going to lead to frustration and burnout. Now is the time to reset your expectations, reframe what success is going to look like, and then build a plan to make it happen.
As mentioned above, this will probably mean tossing out some of the things you had hoped to accomplish initially. And that’s a good thing. You might feel like a weight has been lifted when you throw out those earlier goals and free up time (and mental energy) to zoom in on the things you are confident will push you forward.
Refine Your Systems to Support a Fresh Perspective
It’s all well and good to give yourself some new targets for the rest of the year, but without systems, those goals are unlikely to be realized. If you started the new year by developing some daily systems that would support the progress you are trying to make, you’ll need to revisit those systems to make sure they are aligned with your new vision for the future.
- Track your time for one week. This is a powerful exercise while you are in the middle of a reset. Make a log of how you are spending your time and what goals that time is serving. You might find that your patterns have drifted from what you planned at the start of the year, and you can use this point to make adjustments to your daily activities.
- Explore new technologies. It’s possible that you could tap into new tech options at this time to optimize your systems. Does it feel like you are spending time on tasks that could be at least partially automated to save you time and effort? There are countless possibilities in just about every area of business, so look into relevant tools that might be able to cut down on your time obligations for a modest investment.
- Protect your focused time. This is one of those things that most people need to reinforce constantly to make happen. If you have time set aside on your calendar each day to focus on a specific task that is important to your business, make sure you have the time necessary for that work completely blocked off. That means you aren’t checking messages or being interrupted by calls. Find a way to protect this time above all else and you might be surprised by what is possible.
Recommit and Move Forward
For as important as it is to go through a mid-year refresh and take a look at what needs to be improved in your business, you don’t want to get stuck in this retrospective mode for long. Be intentional about doing the work of reviewing your habits and seeing how they relate to your goals, but then move on and get back to work.
You aren’t going to be able to erase the last six months, and you don’t have to. Surely, some good things were accomplished in your business, along with some likely disappointments. The next step is to recommit to improving your operation by learning from your mistakes, building on your wins, and continuing to work hard day after day. With a renewed focus and reason for optimism, you can dive back in and take time to reset again once the next new year arrives.