Top Strategies to Start 2021 Strong

Do you want to leave 2020 behind and start the new year strong as a leader or business owner? Read our Top Strategies to Start 2021 Strong! 

Trying to understand the changes COVID brought hasn’t been easy and may have caused many leaders to struggle in many ways. Fortunately, there are critical strategies to implement and improve your chances of success in 2021 by learning from the challenging year we leave behind. This week on our Instagram Live, we hosted top business strategist guest Celine Williams to share the key takeaways from 2020 and the top strategies to start 2021 strong. 

• Learn from setbacks: 

Many business owners have been tested by constant changes that COVID has demanded of their business. However, it is crucial to see setbacks as an opportunity to learn and get better instead of being a barrier. If your business has failed to make changes during COVID, contacting your customers and employees can help you to identify key weaknesses in your strategy and opportunities where can improve. 

• Embrace taking your business online: 

The increased digitalization during COVID has broken down regional barriers and increased flexibility, product, and service line opportunities in the workplace. Despite this, some business owners may want to revert to the structure before COVID.  Celine’s tip:  Embrace technology in your business as it may allow you to tap into a larger market share. Pivoting back may lead to the loss of major business opportunities especially if your business faces another shutdown. 

• Empathise and adjust: 

Leaders need to get better at empathizing with their teams and adjusting their work structure to accommodate the pressures their team may be facing during the pandemic, such as lack of childcare and homeschooling. A leader’s inability to tune in to what their team may be dealing with can lead to further difficulty for employees and disruptions in the business. In addition to their work environment, listening to customers to understand their changing needs may lead to new potential service or product offerings providing the business with new income streams. 

• Improve your business with data-driven strategies: 

Businesses may not be sure about which aspects of their businesses are succeeding and failing after their implemented changes. Instead of making assumptions, getting feedback from employees, team members and customers and looking at your bottom line is the best way to adjust and improve the outlook for your business. 

• Measure performance, reflect and set goals: 

Reflecting on actions, decisions and previous strategies is an important guide for the future. If you want to want to start 2021 strong, Celine recommends that you self-reflect and set goals for the upcoming year. To ensure your goals stay on track, set goals each quarter instead of for the entire year. Once you finish the quarter, you can reflect on what strategies worked, you can ask yourself what didn’t work and zero in on the activities that are helping you to meet your targets. This practice will help you to determine the key takeaways in your business every quarter. 

• Practise mindfulness: 

The difficulties of COVID have caused significant changes in our lives, leading many people to experience grief. Whether you are grieving about isolation, changed work conditions, loss of family members or others, getting stuck in these feelings or trying to avoid them can cause additional trauma. To move past these feelings, we must first learn to accept and process them by practising mindfulness using mediation exercises and deep breathing to focus on staying calm and in the moment.  

We hope you enjoyed reading our blog post! Check the full live chat here. You can find our live chats and more of the latest financial news on our News Blog. Stay tuned to learn more tips on a new topic each week on our Instagram Live at 5 on Instagram! Aside from our live chats, we post daily financial updates on social media!