I spent most of this morning in meetings with partners and associates whom I work with on a wide variety of projects. The focus of these meetings was on what we’ve done together in 2008, what worked and didn’t, what to continue doing or not, and what new things would we like to try/accomplish in 2009.
It’s something I like to do every year just before Thanksgiving because December gets too crazy with holiday retailing and marketing, and January is too late to do it in my opinion. By January I want to already be knee-deep in kicking off the new year and projects, not still reviewing the previous year.
I have to admit that I’m a little disappointed with the looking back part today. Not for the reasons you might think though.
I’m not disappointed by earnings, in-fact despite the economic status of the world 2008 has been a record breaking year for my business.
However, where we fell short and what leaves me disappointed is in some of the more important goals and challenges we set for ourselves during these meetings last year.
I’ve been clear on this blog about myself over and over. I’m an ideologue with a bleeding heart. I don’t care about my business being disruptive and innovative in the marketplace nearly as much as I want my business to be disruptive and innovative in my neighborhood. In my community. In my world.
Yes, I want to make money with my company, but I could easily make money working for someone else without having all the leadership headaches. In other words, making money isn’t what motivated me to start a business, take on all of the additional responsibilities and liabilities nor put in the 16 (sometimes more) hour days through the first few years.
My motivation was to create something bigger than myself that would be able to do more than I alone could do in helping others. An entity that could be a real pillar in the community. A springboard for doing good. A benefit to the world for having existed. A resource for its clients. And a way that I could earn a decent and honest living with pride. Mostly in that order.
It’s come a long way from those early years, and I’ve accomplished much of what I intended at the start. By no means am I unhappy about where my business stands in “the big picture” of what I want it to be.
But it’s a few individual goals for projects that we established for 2008 where we fell short of what we wanted which have me perplexed and disappointed in myself for losing focus here and there, for not driving harder when I probably should have.
Again, not because I lost potential profits on those projects, but because the people who may have benefited from the success of the projects didn’t; and it’s impossible with such “what could have been’s” for me to not feel as though I’ve personally let some people down along the way.
It isn’t that we weren’t able to do good things in 2008. For instance 17 children from low income homes received free musical instruments and free lessons from professional musicians because of one program we sponsor. That’s a great thing and I’m very proud of it. But, our expansion goals were to reach 30 children with this program in 2008 and we fell short by nearly half–that’s hugely disappointing to me.
And several other projects had similar results which fell short of our desired goals, as well as a couple of projects which we weren’t able to get off the planning boards as we’d hoped this year that will now carry over to (hopefully) projects for 2009. Sure, it’ll be satisfying if we can get those launched in ‘09, but since we didn’t get them done in ‘08 that means there’s less room for other projects in ‘09 now.
It’s a struggle every year, trying to balance a profitable and socially responsible business model, and we’re always playing catch-up.
I suppose that’s a good thing in some respects because it forces us to constantly be looking for ways to “do it better” and do more with less which spawns creative innovations and efficiencies.
But it’s also hard to really feel good about what you do accomplish when you look at how much that you didn’t or couldn’t in comparison.
I realize this is probably sounding like I’m a bit depressed or having a case of “the Monday’s”, and that’s not so. I’m very happy with my life and work, both in the moment and the big pictures.
Being disappointed with some aspect of my production or performance yesterday doesn’t mean I’m unhappy with myself nor my business overall by any stretch, it only means I recognize where I believe I could have done more and gives me the opportunity to be better tomorrow.
That’s why I hold these “Looking Back and Thinking Forward” meetings each year. So that I’m always on track to be better tomorrow. And I’d encourage others to do the same in their businesses and lives too. Even small or home based business owners who are operating alone or as freelancers. You don’t have to hold a meeting with anyone but yourself to just take a few minutes to see where you’ve been, where you’re at and then plan where you want to go.
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