TIPS SHEET - END OF YEAR REVIEWS
It’s helpful to have end of year reviews. Your own reviews could cover your
business, personal life, health and lots more. Here are a few ideas about
reviews:
1 Fix a date for your review. It needs to be near the end of the year, but you
could make progress on quite a bit of it sooner if you choose.
2 Decide on a format for your review:
Will you do it digitally or as a paper exercise?
Will you include audio or video comments from yourself or others?
Will you include work samples or other supporting material?
3 Break down your review into different areas – some possible topics are:
Business results – finance, marketing, operations, technology, research,
customer relations etc.
Personal skills development – time management, inter-personal skills,
presenting/facilitating/training/coaching/mentoring etc.
Personal issues – health, relationships etc.
4 Have some criteria for assessing your review areas one. Even something as
simple as the following criteria can help:
Achieved/not achieved
Excellent, reasonable, poor
Worth continuing/not worth continuing
5 Remember to assess outcomes and not just activities, as it’s possible to be
very busy and yet not very effective.
6 Assess reasons for success or failure.
7 Be objective in your assessments and conclusions.
8 Get some other people’s opinions. Often, things we think are positive aren’t
seen in the same way by others, so this is a useful exercise. Potential groups
to ask are colleagues, employees, customers, suppliers and so on.
9 Stay positive and not complacent.
10 Set some goals for next year, taking this year’s review as a
starting point for what to include.
11 Plan for your next year’s review as well. It’s much easier to do a review if
you’ve gathered information along the way, so put some simple processes in
place to make the end of next year even easier.
12 Give yourself a reward for either effort, or results, or both - depending on
the circumstances. Hopefully you’ll have done your best and, if not, you’ll
have a way of improving in the future.
Carol Harris
TIPS SHEET - END OF YEAR REVIEWS
It’s helpful to have end of year reviews. Your own reviews
could cover your business, personal life, health and lots more.
Here are a few ideas about reviews:
1 Fix a date for your review. It needs to be near the end of the year,
but you could make progress on quite a bit of it sooner if you choose.
2 Decide on a format for your review:
Will you do it digitally or as a paper exercise?
Will you include audio or video comments from yourself or others?
Will you include work samples or other supporting material?
3 Break down your review into different areas – some possible topics
are:are:
Business results – finance, marketing, operations, technology,
research, customer relations etc.
Personal skills development – time management, inter-personal
skills, presenting/facilitating/training/coaching/mentoring etc.
Personal issues – health, relationships etc.
4 Have some criteria for assessing your review areas one. Even
something as simple as the following criteria can help:
Achieved/not achieved
Excellent, reasonable, poor
Worth continuing/not worth continuing
5 Remember to assess outcomes and not just activities, as it’s
possible to be very busy and yet not very effective.
6 Assess reasons for success or failure.
7 Be objective in your assessments and conclusions.
8 Get some other people’s opinions. Often, things we think are
positive aren’t seen in the same way by others, so this is a useful
exercise. Potential groups to ask are colleagues, employees,
customers, suppliers and so on.
9 Stay positive and not complacent.
10 Set some goals for next year, taking this year’s review as a
starting point for what to include.
11 Plan for your next year’s review as well. It’s much easier to do a
review if you’ve gathered information along the way, so put some
simple processes in place to make the end of next year even easier.
12 Give yourself a reward for either effort, or results, or both -
depending on the circumstances. Hopefully you’ll have done your
best and, if not, you’ll have a way of improving in the future.
Carol Harris