I hope you made some time to reflect on the successes, surprises, and challenges of 2018 before jumping right into 2019. My team and I take time every year to reflect on how much we accomplished and strategize plans for what we want to accomplish in the year ahead. Time moves quickly, so it’s important to stop, reflect, celebrate, and plan for what’s about to unfold.
Here are a few things I thought about during my reflection and want I want to embrace more in 2019.
Joining Super Powers
What is your super power? We all have them—do you know what yours is? Do you know what super power each person on your team has? Some may call their super power a skill, talent, gift, or ability, but I prefer super power. When you take the sum of a team’s super powers and work them all together amazing things can happen.
There are some super powers I will never have and that is alright with me. I just need to look for people who do have those super powers and give them all the power to use them! Take inventory of your team’s super powers and stop trying to force people to have a super power that they will never have. We all have unique powers—encourage more of that!
Proof is in the Data
Data is such a beautiful word. Like Jerry Maguire said, “show me the data!” Okay, that might not have been exactly what he said, but I do feel like I channel him when I say, “show me the data!”
Data driven change is what creates the most impact. If you are driving change of one issue, one complaint, one ball dropped, you are going to exhaust yourself and be making changes that have little impact. Instead of solving for outlier issues, solve when you see a pattern of similar issues and look at the data to backup that there actually is a problem.
Lean on Each Other
There is nothing heroic about trying to figure out everything by yourself. In fact, it’s a path that usually leads to failure. One person trying to do everything alone is going to lead to burn out, less creativity, recreating the wheel, and a lot more stress! The phrase ‘play bigger’ is used a lot in sports. This is the same for us at work. We can play bigger when we ask for help and stop hogging the ball.
Take notice of the super powers within and around you, check out the data, and play bigger by asking those around you with the super powers to help create change with data. Many of you have our product CampusMetrics. I would encourage you to start 2019 by reaching out to your Customer Success Manager (they have CampusMetrics super powers) and ask them for help digging into your data.
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