Jumpstart Business in the New Year with Spirit Box
Are you ready for a new calendar year? Is your Spirit Box team? A new year means new possibilities for both you and your school-based enterprise. Taking action now can help set you up for success when the new year begins. Let’s talk about a few ways you can get started!
Assess Your Progress
You can’t know where you’re going, unless you know where you are. That is why it is a great idea to assess your progress from the school’s first semester/terms. You and your team can get together to reflect on what worked, what didn’t work, and what you learned.
There are a few different ways you can go about this. One of the most common is a SWOT analysis, which captures your business Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats. You can learn more about this kind of analysis and download a worksheet to get started here.
This kind of analysis can help your team get on the same page for setting goals for the new year. It will also help you ensure you capitalize on opportunities and minimize your threats and weaknesses.
Action Step: Gather your team and reflect on your work from the past semester.
Gather Important Dates
After you reflect on the past, it is time to start looking forward to the future. A concrete way to start your planning is to gather any important dates that will affect your Spirit Box team. This could include school event dates, community events that affect your school, holidays and more. Gathering this information ahead of time will help you not only create timely promotions, but also to anticipate new opportunities your team hadn’t yet considered.
Action Step: Compile school and grade calendars and start charting the dates.
Set SMART Goal Strategies
Next, it is time to start thinking about what exactly you want to accomplish in the last half of the school year and beyond. A great way to do this is to set some S.M.A.R.T. Goals and create some strategies to achieve them. S.M.A.R.T. Goals answer the following questions:
Specific: who, what, when, where, and why?
Measurable: How will you measure your progress? What are your metrics to measure?
Attainable: Is this something you can get done with your skill level and time?
Relevant: Is this relevant to my overall goals for the future?
Timely: What is your deadline? Why is this your deadline? Is it realistic?
Setting goals in this manner helps you to not only clarify what you want to achieve, but how you’re going to achieve it and by what date. This helps to keep you and your team accountable to one another and to your business.
This is where your SWOT analysis and important dates come together. As you think about each aspect of your business, which areas of your SWOT analysis are the most pressing? Are there events or holidays that could help to generate new or additional sales?
You can learn more about setting S.M.A.R.T. Goals and creating strategies to achieve them here.
Action Step: Work with your team to set a few goals in the S.M.A.R.T. format.
Adjust Team Responsibilities
Once your team has set some clear, actionable and reasonable goals, you can then determine how to delegate responsibilities. Perhaps some people will be leaving the team and others are coming. Consider with your team and advisor how you can onboard new team members effectively and ensure each person is working in an area that is relevant to their experience.
Perhaps in the last semester, someone realized they thought they would like marketing, but really enjoyed the financial side of things more. Or maybe someone was working in customer service and realized they would rather have a greater say in production. Depending on the requirements your team sets, work with your other team members to make some adjustments in responsibilities to help each person remain excited and motivated as they move into the new calendar year.
Learn more about hiring the right people for your SBE here.
Action Step: Discuss roles and responsibilities with your team and make any adjustments.
Execute & Win!
If you get all of the above items in place before the new calendar year begins, once school starts up, you’ll be ready to execute on your plans. Keep your goals where you and the rest of the team can see them regularly, and track progress along the way. This will help keep each person motivated and help them see how they contribute to the team’s success.
Action Step: If you’d like assistance developing your plan for the upcoming year, feel free to give us a call. We’d love to help set your team up to win!