By: Laura Jozwiak
This article originally appeared in Fleet Management Weekly
It is December. In the Midwest, that means the weather turns cold, the sky turns steel grey, and the ground will most likely turn white with the falling snow. It’s the time that we cover our patio furniture and tuck away the gardening tools. For me, it’s also the time to reflect, give closure to the year, and start looking forward to the possibilities of the next 365 days.
I have always appreciated this part of the cycle — this annual time of reflection, renewal, and focus. Like a seed that is hibernating underground in the winter until the soil warms up and takes root to flourish in the spring, so do our thoughts.
- What has been hibernating in your mind that you want to examine more closely?
- What did you want to accomplish in 2022?
- Did you do it?
- What were the key contributors that drove that success or what got in your way?
- Did your world shift and reroute your goals?
- Did your world shift and you just realized you didn’t shift with it?
All of these are critical questions to ask yourself when you take this time for honest reflection and evaluation. With these thoughts hibernating in your mind, you can create your new plan moving forward. Within the context of your current environment, dream of what you could accomplish in 2023.
This practice starts with you, but in this customer-driven world, we are accountable to bring this exercise forward to our teams and to our clients. After you have looked inward, look outward. Take this same approach of reflecting, renewing, and focusing on the goals you and your teams had in place with your clients this year and examine what was learned, accomplished, shifted, or still open. Investigate the market and client dynamics to determine how we can continue pushing our fleets and partnerships forward.
We have challenges to overcome with the supply chain, inflationary impacts, sustainability targets, and managing through the tactical to get to the strategic. These challenges can come at us fast, and if we don’t pause and reflect, we run the risk of missteps and missed opportunities. I encourage you to take these last few days of the year to celebrate what we have been able to achieve and double down on being customer driven. If you want extraordinary results, lean into extraordinary opportunities!