2016 is over – it’s history.  WWWWHHHAAATTTT you might ask? What about those 8 more weeks until January?  What calendar are you looking at?

You may feel that your year is nowhere near over. And at a high level,  I agree, there ARE 8 more weeks and fully 15% of the year yet to go. However, I expect that you have clear line of sight to year end. 10 months of financials have been completed and those books are closed. If your world looks like my world, clients have already committed to their big Q1 initiatives, and many have completed their funding approvals and planning for all their key initiatives through Q4 for next year. I was sitting with a client this week and his comment was I will be taking 3 of the remaining 8 weeks off this year off because my business year is winding down and I plan to enjoy the holidays.  For many of us, we really are on the threshold of year end. As I approach year end I get ready to do my personal and business reconciliation  and there are key questions that I want to spend some time on.  How did the year turn out? What were my revenue and profit numbers compared to plan and what did we achieve?  

I have been doing day long business planning sessions for over 10 years now in my business and as a result of that we have a nifty one pager to use throughout the year and that also facilitates the year end review. Reflecting on this is step one.

Despite the one pager being useful I have found that just reflecting on the goals in the plan does not capture all the notable details from the year so in addition, I have a few other questions that I ask myself and my clients.

• What are you most proud of from the past 12 months?
• What changed for your business this year?
• What changed for you personally?
• What did you learn?
• What was your highest, most wonderful moment and what was the low point?
• What is your intention (or aspiration) for 2017?
• Fast forward to December 31, 2017, what do you want to be celebrating? Think in terms of head, heart, body and soul.

Now that you heard about my year end practice, what will you do to wrap up 2016? What does your planning and preparation for 2017 include? Do you know what your “Big Rocks” will be for next year? Do you know what you want to learn?

Happy reflecting.

I love and use significant sections of “Unravelling” for my personal year end review by Susannah Conway. For those that want to dig deeper into the year that was, the Unravelling can be accessed at www.susannahconway.com