Anticipating and Creating the Future for the New Year
Updated: Dec 14, 2020
The new year is the perfect time to reflect and analyze how your company did this past year and to set goals to improve for the new one. 2020 was the year that nobody planned for, but it made businesses everywhere pivot and rethink their plans. Learn how your business can go into 2021 with a new strategy and goals to succeed.
Planning for the New Year
Planning for the future is difficult, especially when we are in unprecedented times; however, by thinking ahead, your business will be able to adapt better. Rethinking, remarketing, and reworking your business have become essential in keeping your business successful in this changing world. One of the best tools that helps you look ahead and plan for the future is the What's Next? tool.
What's Next for 2021?
The What's Next? tool is a way to look into the future and prepare yourself for what you think the current trends or situations will be in the future. Although no one has a crystal ball, this helps to crystalize some of the ideas about where your business might be heading. If circumstances change, then you can redesign your business.
The What's Next? exercise is a simple four-step process that can help you avoid being surprised by changes. First, you talk about what is? and challenge your team to think about what they believe to be true right now about your company, customers, competitors, the marketplace, etc.
Second, comes the what's next? step. Take into consideration all that's known or believed about current conditions, ask your team what they think will happen next? Discuss all the possibilities without judging their likelihood.
Then you can move to the what-if? question and have a conversation about innovating. You can ask questions like 'what if we took this approach?' or 'what if we implement this idea?' Trying these new innovative ways is essential because a lot of times, they never get implemented for fear of failure. The What's Next tool helps push past that fear.
Then comes the final step, asking what now? which is the solution-oriented step. When a great idea emerges, then, of course, you should say ‘what now?’ and figure out how to implement it. The solutions you come up with become the next steps you take to ensure the company's future success. Implementing these ideas in the new year can help to create a vision for the future of your business.
