I’ve noticed that many people I’ve been working with this week seem to be, well, somewhere else, for want of a better description.  The holiday period is looming fast and thoughts may be more on ‘what on earth will I get Auntie Betty this year’ than ‘how can I use the remaining time in December to close out the year on a high?’

Many of us will be working through the festive season, and the days between the Christmas and New Year holidays may well be the quietest of the year.  Rather than catching up on filing or tidying up your email folders, this can be a great time to reflect, review and prepare as a team for the coming year.

You will no doubt have conducted annual reviews with each team member individually – looking back over their achievements and successes, and noting what you would like to work on in the coming year.  So, how can you take the next step and do the same with your whole team together?

This can be a really simple process – start with some questions to consider what’s been achieved this year:

• did we have a clear purpose that was understood by everyone?
• how have we performed against our objectives?
• to what degree have we developed as a team this past year?
• how well did we use the individual strengths within the team to support the whole?
• what were our key successes?
• what were our major disappointments?
• why did they occur, and how will we prevent them next year?
• what lessons did we learn?

Together, write out the answers to that last question – don’t focus on why the thing happened or who was to blame; be specific and clear about what you learned as a team.  It is not the event but the learning that matters, and focusing on what you would do differently is the most valuable part of your development as a team.

Next, put the past behind you and look forward to the coming year.

• Is our purpose, or mission, still valid given changes that may have occurred in the last year?  Do we need to reposition? 
• What do we want to achieve as a team?
• How will we incorporate the lessons we learned last year?
• How will we know whether we have been successful – what will we measure?
• How will we celebrate our successes, and when?

Again, write out the answers to these questions together – these form the basis of your plan for the coming 12 months. 

Well done!  Having this work completed before the new year has even begun is a fantastic achievement – you are well on your way to team success in 2007!