Time for reflection

Usually at this time of year, I am working on a speech for the company holiday party. My goal is always to give a meaningful and entertaining message. So I begin to reflect on the past year - all the things we accomplished, the occasional disappointment, the new people we added to the team, the people who left. The speech gets done but more importantly, I am compelled to review the year, put it in perspective, and consider what my team and I should be doing differently in the future.

At my current company, our development process includes a biweekly retrospective, where we review the engineering processes and procedures and make changes as needed. There are places to look at the company's progress from a financial standpoint on a regular basis. But there is no place in the business where we look at how we are doing as leaders. I am going to make a change so that on a quarterly basis we do take time out to do a level set to "measure and learn" so that it becomes part of the overall company process. The details are not yet figured out but it will be something simple. More importantly, I believe it will be something that is effective as we are working hard to establish a culture that accepts change and thrives on continuous learning and improvement. 

I encourage all of you to do some reflection at this time of year (and on a more regular basis).  If you need some help on what kinds of things to do, here is a year-end checklist from Inc. to give you some ideas.