As we arc towards the end of the year, it’s time to focus in on our 2020 vision. I’ve been enjoying hosting a number of events in the last few weeks around visioning for the new year, and new decade.

If you weren’t able to join us last week for the 2020 Vision session, please check out the recording here. You can download an associated worksheet here as well. The session will take about 30 minutes to go through.

Having a vision is important for a number of reasons. Our vision is important as it can help us to:

• Move through the ups and downs of everyday business. It can provide an anchor when things are turbulent.
• Stay focused and make decisions. It may make it easier to say yes to things that align with where we want to go and say no to things that are out of range.
• Pull us forward and motivate us when things are not working well.

Today’s post also serves as an opportunity to pause and take stock of where things are at. What are the things that need attention and need to get done before the end of the year? Is there anything you haven’t yet accomplished that you do want to put attention on?

As part of today’s post, be sure to grab a pen and participate in the 2020 Vision session I facilitated last week. You will find it here on YOUTUBE. Enjoy!

Best wishes, 
​Jennifer

Jennifer Britton
Potentials Realized | Coaching Team Leaders | Remote Pathways Podcast
Team and Leadership Development | Coaching | Writing 
Phone (416)996-8326
 
As we step into the end of the year, get your planning on with the PlanDoTrack Workbook and Planner or Coaching Business Builder
Looking to enhance your virtual conversations? Webinars? Pick up a copy of Effective Virtual Conversations at Amazon.

This week’s Weekly Journaling Prompt brings us to #73 in the series. This week’s prompt gets you to write about, and reflect on, “I love __ about my work”. This is a great question to bring in at this time of year, as you are reflecting on what’s work, and perhaps what changes you want to take in the new year.

Each one of the journaling prompts provides you with a valuable question. If you are looking for a great year end series of prompts, consider picking up a copy of one of the quarterly downloadable Journaling Prompts downloads. You can find Volume 1 here. They just cost $7 US and provide you with space, and prompts to reflect, based on this series. Enjoy!

What time are you going to carve out this weekend to reflect?

All the best,
​Jennifer

Jennifer Britton – Potentials Realized 
Leadership | Teamwork | Business Success
Author of multiple books including Effective Virtual Conversations (2017), PlanDoTrack (2019) and From One to Many: Best Practices for Team and Group Coaching (2013)
Follow along with the #90DaysPlanDoTrack series over at Instagram @CoachingBizBuilder 
Join the conversation at the Conversation Sparker Zone - our online community where you can explore virtual and team issues, coaching, productivity and business development.
Pick up a copy of Volume 1 of the Weekly Journaling Prompts in a digital format. Print it out and take it with you for some inspiration and writing on the go! Available at the Potentials Realized Store.
For those looking for tips, tools and ideas about remote work and support for your remote teams, be sure to check out these tags and resources. ​

As we step into the new year, what’s your intention? What do you want to achieve in this last year of the decade?
365 days from now what are you looking forward to:

• Doing every day (or at least several times a week)?
• Investing in?
• Financing?
• Spending time with?

If you haven’t done so already, I hope you’ll take a few minutes today to capture your goals and intentions for the year.
​
Goal setting is just one part of the equation of success. Ongoing action and accountability are two other important elements for success.
What are you doing to build in time in your schedule for an ongoing focus on planning, and action?

As I write in PlanDoTrack, a reminder of what Peter Drucker wrote - “what doesn’t get scheduled, doesn’t get done”.
​
What time have you built into your schedule for ongoing focus on larger projects and tasks?

If you haven’t got it in your schedule already, block it out right now! Productivity experts often point to 90 minute to 3 hour blocks being good amounts of time to get things done. Can you schedule in 2 x 90 minute blocks right now into your schedule on a weekly basis?

As we move into 2019, I am pleased to step into the sixth year of daily posts for the Teams365 blog. Topics we’ll be exploring this year are:

• January - Last year, we started the 19 for 2019 – a series included on Tuesday and Wednesday for December and January which will provide you with tips and ideas for boosting your personal and professional productivity.
• February – Relationships and Collaboration
• March - Building Your Team

Beyond these we will also look at topics including Virtual Team work, Mentoring, Feedback, Virtual Facilitation, Creating powerful learning environments, planning and project management.

If you haven’t seen it yet, be sure to pick up a copy of the new PlanDoTrack Workbook and Planner for Virtual and Remote Professionals. It’s an analog desk-sized planner you can start using at any time – packed with annual, quarterly, and monthly tools, PLUS resources to support you with your content creation and also creative planning! Pick up a copy here.

For now, we’re circling back to the 19 for 2019. Let’s get started with January’s posts – 19 for 2019.  We’ll be heading back to Tip 7 tomorrow.

Check out the past Teams365 19 for 2019 Productivity Tips here. 

I’ll be back with our next one #7 in the series tomorrow!

Best wishes, 
Jennifer

​Today is Boxing Day here in Canada, and in the years before Black Friday also became common place in our shopping malls, Boxing Day was the day of the year to scoop up great savings. I was told as a child the reason for why it is called Boxing Day is because of the focus on filling the boxes with goodies for the end of the year. Regardless, for most of us, our attention is now turning to the end of the year and reflections on the year that was.
​
In today’s post I wanted to provide you with several questions to support you with your year end planning. Today, we are going to start with taking a look back at the year that was, and in another few days we’ll look at planning for the year head. To get some inspiration (and leverage) I reached back and took a look at what I wrote a couple of years ago, on Boxing Day 2016. Read it here.  

Here are ten questions to support you in reflecting back on the last year:
1. What's been your biggest success this year?
2. What are you most proud of accomplishing? OR What were your greatest results?
3 What habits have most supported you this year?
4. What three adjectives sum up the year for you?
5. What were key relationships instrumental to your success and experience this year?
6. What has been your biggest, and most important, learning this year?
7. If you were to give this year a book title, what would it be?
8. What do you want to make sure you keep doing in the new year? What do you want to stop doing?
9. What do you want to acknowledge yourself for?
10. How and when will you celebrate the successes of 2018? With whom?
​
Do make a point to take some time today to reflect AND WRITE these ideas down. If you have not created a journal for yourself for the new year, perhaps today is he day to grab a new book, or start a new file. As I wrote several weeks ago, there are many benefits of journaling, check them out here. 

Best,
​Jennifer

​Jennifer Britton – Potentials Realized 
Author of multiple books including Effective Virtual Conversations (2017), Coaching Business Builder (2018) and From One to Many: Best Practices for Team and Group Coaching (2013)
Follow along with the #90DaysPlanDoTrack series over at Instagram @CoachingBizBuilder 
Now available– PlanDoTrack Workbook and Planner - Order a copy today on Amazon

​Given our quickly shifting focus to the holidays and year end, I thought it would be appropriate to shift our attention back to a Linked In article I wrote and post I shared this time last year – Teams365 #1389.

This "It’s that time of year for parties, year-end team retreats and other events. Are you maximizing the amount of time and impact of these team events?

Having supported year-end programming for teams and organizations for many years I thought it would be useful to share four focus areas you may want to consider as you start preparing, planning and perhaps facilitating your year-end processes.

Number One — What’s the purpose? If you had to distill down the top two or three takeaways from the retreat process or that off site, what is it? The purpose of our year-end function can impact the structure and activities undertaken in the program.

Is the purpose of your year-end event:

• to build connection?
• to share important information?
• do some goal planning?
• to build understanding across the silos, that may exist within your organization?

I’d encourage you to think about the top two or three purposes of the upcoming program and link to consideration #2.

Number Two — What is the connection to the business? Think about what is the connection to the business. It’s still very common in today’s world for people to just go through the motions of a traditional annual year end party and /or event. 
Are you really maximizing that investment of bringing people together?
Could you build into that luncheon a half-day session before or after, to do some work with your staff teams to support their development, to help them look at their skills and strengths and styles and also to share with them, you know, and help them connect to the link with your business.
What opportunities do you have already formalized for bringing people together at year-end? What changes or additions do you want to make?

Number Three — Do you want to do it all alone? Many organizations today have a committee and amongst that committee membership, there may be some members who would be very comfortable in facilitating your year-end team or organizational process.
So, think about who might be best equipped to do the work? Is it you, members of that committee or maybe you are interested in bringing in an external facilitator?
One of the things we do, is either we come in and facilitate or develop activities which you can facilitate yourself.
Think about how you might be able to leverage the resources you have and or bring in some special guest speakers or external resources to contribute to the environment that you want to create.

Number Four — How are you going to take this forward? One of the biggest challenges that we see in learning and development today is this continued lack of transferability to the work place.
This was what drew me to focus more on the area of Coaching which places an ongoing emphasis on accountability and transferability to the workplace.
One the things I like to encourage organizations that I partner with to always thinking about is – How will you sustain the conversation? How will you take this forward into your work?
Hopefully any year-end retreat process or year-end meeting will have an action step and a very formalized action planning stage. Remember to build in time in the new year to revisit your commitments and accountabilities.

Here’s a quick recap:
Number One - Think about the purpose. What are the top three or four reasons or things that you want people to take away?
Number Two - What’s the link of the year-end program to the business? Is it just to have fun or something else?
Number Three - As your approaching your year-end processes, is this something you want to do or do you want to bring in a facilitator? A third option perhaps is to have something designed for you, so you can facilitate it yourself.
And finally, Number Four. What are the takeaways? How will people sustain the conversation? When will you check in on your actions and commitments?
I hope that you’re finding these ideas valuable, practical, and of course, implementable."
What are you looking forward to creating for your team in terms of year end planning and reflection?

Take a look at some of the other year end posts here. 

Best,
Jennifer

Jennifer Britton
Potentials Realized | Effective Virtual Conversations |  Coaching Team Leaders  
Join Jennifer for a year-end virtual planning retreat in the PlanDoTrack Series!
Instagram @CoachingBizBuilder 
YouTube – Teams365 Leadership Channel
Email: info@potentialsrealized.com
(416)996-8326

As we start creeping to the close of the year, pressure ramps up to “Get it done!”. There may not seem to be enough hours in the day, or even the rest of the year, to get EVERY. THING. DONE!

Today’s post gets you thinking about a number of “year-end productivity hacks” which bring us back to some of the tried and true prioritization tools:

#1 – Understanding your Pareto Ratio – The 80/20 rule asserts that we get 80% of our results from 20% of our efforts. While it may not be truly 80% it can be very useful to think about the areas that provide the most impact in your work, and the results you are aiming towards.
It can be very useful to understand where we get our impact, particularly at crunch time, so that we know what to say yes to, and what we want to say no to.
 
#2 – Going back to Covey’s Urgent/Important Framework – I have written about how a five day training around Steven Covey’s work as a younger manager more than 15 years ago, still influences my thinking about time management. If you haven’t read The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, do it now! With the volume of distractions at a peak (from social media, to tech, to diffuse focus):

• What’s really important to be focusing on now?
• What’s important in the mid-term so that you are setting yourself up for success in the new year?
• What are distractions and time wasters?
  

#3 – What can you delegate and defer?
Delegation continues to be a stretch area for most professionals today. Many times we feel we can’t delegate or we have no one to delegate to? What are the tasks that only you can do? What are the tasks that could be chunked down/broken down, so others might be able to complete?
For more on delegation – check out this LinkedIn article “Your Key To Success: Effective Delegation” I wrote on delegation.

#4 – What is absolutely essential?
Sometimes we really need to get ruthless with  our time, asking “what’s absolutely essential?”. As we get into crunch time, what are the things we need to move to the finish line this year, no matter what? What are the elements that can carry over? What elements need to be put on hold?
 
For more on these prioritization tools, take a look at what I wrote in Teams365 #951 on prioritization.

​It may seem early to some, but before we know it, the end of the year will be here! If you are a business owner or team leader, already you may have your year-end celebrations well in place. If you don’t, it’s not too late! Here’s a post I wrote back in 2015 on 10 different things you might want to build in time for at year end. Here’s what I wrote in Teams365 #703.

Today's post gets you to think further about year end activities and possible retreat ideas for your team. While not everyone will be able to take a day away from the office, even spreading some of these activities over a couple of weeks, or the next month or two, gets you thinking about and in dialogue about important issues.

Here are ten things to be sparking focus and conversation around with your team:

1. Creating a Year in Summary - Using photos or words  how would you describe the highlights of the last year
2. Strengths based work using either StrengthsFinder or VIA Strengths
3. Goal setting for the new year - overall goals, quarterly goals, monthly goals. Looking at how individual, team and organizational goals overlap
4. Creating an action plan for the new year
5. Creating a Vision for the new year
6. Vision Modelling - using tin foil, plastercine or paper mache, coming up with a model for your vision that you as a team can look at regularly
7. Coming up with a theme for the year
8. Taking time to acknowledge each other
9. Celebrating your successes from the year -  a lunch out (or in) or a night out bowling or playing ping pong (yes teams can have fun together!)
10. Setting an intention for the year

What other activities might you undertake to wrap up the year together?

Have a great weekend,
Jennifer

In today’s busy world, it’s very common to get on the treadmill of doing, without taking time to stop, and reflect on what’s working and what’s not. While we might not have a full day to dedicate to planning regularly “micro-bursts” of 5-15 minutes regularly can make a difference.
Peter Drucker wrote “ Follow effective actions with quiet reflection. From the quiet reflection will come even more effective action”  Peter Drucker
Over the last 8 days we have explored:
Take stock of your achievements and successes from the year that was – Day 1. Read it here.
Create a clear and compelling vision of your year – Day 2. Read it here
Be specific with your goals – Day 3. Read it here.
Identify and focus on priorities first – Day 4. Read it here.
Create habits and practices that will support you in what you want to achieve – Day 5. Read it here.
Be ruthless with your time and scheduling – Day 6
Develop a community of support around you – Day 7
In the same vein, building in time to celebrate is 
Consider these questions for today’s prompts:
1.       As you think back to the last 8 days, what have you achieved?
2.       What needs a change from the original goals you mapped out last week?
3.       What momentum have you created for yourself? 
4.       What are you most surprised about?
5.       What have you learned about yourself, your vision and your goals?
6.       What have you noticed about your pace of action and reflection (i.e. when do you do this best – early morning? Late at night? In chunks?) 
7.       What time do you want to build in to make planning, and “quiet reflection” a regular part of your world?
8.         What will you do to celebrate your movement forward?
9.       Complete this sentence, by the end of January I will have…..
10.     By the end of the year I will have….
Thank you for joining me as we kick off January 2018. I will be scheduling in a quarterly virtual retreat throughout the year and hope that you may join me to reflect, take stock and most importantly take action!
Stay tuned for the monthly planning resource templates I am sharing (first one here – the Quarterly Plan)

Earlier this week I started the Kickstart Your 2018 – 8 Sets of Questions for 2018. I hope that you will check out day 1 and 2 here.

In kickstarting your year, you will want to make sure that you are as specific with your goals as possible.

Did you know:
​More than 
​About 44% of American's will set goals for the year? (
92% of new years resolutions will fail by January 15th?
One of the most often goal setting studies quoted from Harvard, really did not take place at all?
Dominican university Dr. Matthews was able to replicate the same study and found that three factors helped with goal success:
accountability,
commitment,
and writing down one’s goals
 
Goals, along with writing them down, accountability (ongoing check points) and commiting to what you want to achieve are  all foundational parts of the coaching process and strategies which myself, and other business coaches, use with our coaching clients.

View Dr. Matthew’s goals study report here and link through to the summary – https://www.dominican.edu/dominicannews/study-highlights-strategies-for-achieving-goals

As part of today’s Kickstart Your 2018 – 8 in 18, today’s focus and reflection questions get you to think about your goals, and more importantly getting more specific about them.

​I hope that you will find 15 minutes to reflect on these questions and write them down. First, take a look back at Day 1 and Day 2, and what you have laid out as part of your vision:
1.        What are top five goals for you in 2018? Write these down.
2.       Looking at each one at a time consider how they can be made SMART-E – Specific, Measurable, Acheivable, Realistic, Timebound and, of course, exciting. Take a few more minutes to break them down further.
One of the tools I like to use to capture my goals is a One Page Plan. Click here to download a One Page Plan Template from my newest book, Effective Virtual Conversations, where I share 18 different templates for you to use in your own work.
3.       Imagine the year overall, what will the way each goal connects with the others?
4.       Map out your timeline or what the journey is going to look like for you. You might make it a roadmap, a stream or other….(See my 2018 roadmap)
5.       What’s possible once you complete each goal?
6.       What resources do you need to be successful with each goal? Consider – people, money, equipment, knowledge, etc.
7.         What could get in the way?
8.         What have you done in the past that you could leverage or apply so that you are successful?
9.         What will you do to keep your goals visible? This could include writing them on a whiteboard, putting an alert on your phone, using an app. Check out Elise Morneau’s article on Best Goal Setting Apps, updated a few days ago at: https://www.lifewire.com/best-goal-setting-apps-3485941
10.    What checkpoints will you use the review and check in around the goals. When will this happen? How will you celebrate? Write these checkpoints in your calendar before you go any further!

That’s our ten questions for today….if you have an extra minute, flip through what you’ve noted for yourself over the last three days. What, if any, trends are you noticing?

Enjoy day 3 of the new year!

​Jennifer
_____________________________________________
A reminder of these two resources available to support you throughout 2018:
A couple of resources that are available to you in kickstarting your 2018. First, join our Get [  ] Done (you fill in the blank) list and receive a monthly planning template you can use in your own planning. Join the list here and download your first planning item – currently this month’s template of a Quarterly Plan.

Friday I am hosting the  Kickstart Your 2018 Virtual Business Planning Retreat. It will run on Friday January 5th from 10 – 4 pm ET on zoom. Kickstarting the year requires focus and action, and my business planning retreats are geared to get you into action. Each hour has a different theme and includes some group time at the start of the hour, followed by individual activities undertaken offline. Hourly themes include:
·         Creating or refining your 2018 Vision
·         Exploring your ecosystem of strengths, capabilities and values
·         Developing your 2018 Roadmap
·         Taking action on a key project
​
The program costs $97 US and includes the six hours of structured activities, group calls and a retreat workbook. Click here to learn more about the day and reserve your spot.

What's your plan for 2018? It's not too late to take a few minutes to make a note of your 2018 planning. For the last several years here at the Teams365 blog I have shared several questions to help you take stock of the year that was (see Teams365 #1458 on Thursday of this week for these questions), and questions to help you plan for the year ahead. Each time I add on a few more.

Here are some to get your juices, and plans, flowing:

• What are your top 5 goals for the new year – individually? Collectively?  Organizationally?
• What successes from 2017 can you build on?
  
• What is going to help you create momentum in the new year?
  
• Who can help you move your plans forward?
  
• What activities are core to the success of you and/or your team in 2018?
  
• What do you want the theme of the new year to be?
  
• What systems will be important for you to put in place or refine?
• What will help accelerate results?
• What will be key relationships to foster or focus on in 2018?
  
• What pauses do you want to build in for reflection and capturing lessons learned. Schedule these in your calendar now!   `
• When you look back on December 31, 2018 what do you hope the year will have brought to you?
  

For those that enjoy an audio version, check out the 2014 recording I did as part of the Inner Biz Virtual Retreat. You can listen in, and follow along, with this 10 minute recording. Enjoy!

Tomorrow I'll be taking a look back at some of the themes we covered this year at the Teams365 blog, and of course, on Monday we step into the new year! We'll start celebrating our 5th year of blogging here at the Teams365 blog. I can't wait. How about you?

Best wishes,
Jennifer