New Year's Revolutions

New Year’s resolutions are great because the change of the year is a good time to set some incremental goals for ourselves. It’s also important to set some transformative goals for our organizations — and that’s what I’m going to suggest here: New Year’s Revolutions!

Here are three Revolutions you might consider putting on your list for 2018:

1. I will not keep doing repetitive manual processes that I could automate.

Kicking the can down the road was fine to do in simpler times, when a can and a road was all a person needed for entertainment. Things just move too fast now. Even if I need to take three times as much time to set up the automation as to do it once manually, I’m going to get back my time by April and I’ll have quadrupled the time I save by December.

2. I will not try to wear every hat in the shop.

Just because I find every aspect of my business interesting does not mean I’m especially gifted in every department. In fact, by trying to do everything every day, I will do nothing exceptionally well and some things won’t get done at all. When I look at the things that have stayed on my to-do list for more than three weeks, those  are prime candidates to be sent to somebody else. My watchwords for 2018 are automate, delegate, outsource. Stretch goal: Maybe I could delegate the outsourcing of automation projects to score a trifecta!

3. I will focus on measuring outcomes of my business.

It’s pretty easy for somebody with a finance background to dwell on the money part of business intelligence. No doubt that’s important. But whether we’re a for-profit or a nonprofit, we also need to work all the time to figure out whether we’re accomplishing our mission. So, first of all, we need to know what our Why* is. And then we need to see how we can quantify the outcomes, so when we get to the end of the year, we have a yardstick to see how we did at meeting objectives.

Did these ideas spark thoughts of Revolution in you? What are some of the big changes you’d like to enact this year?

At Revolution Accounting, we can help you with all of the above, at least as it relates to getting your accounting done, software implemented, and key outcome metrics sorted. Just reach out to us and tell us what’s on your mind!

*If you haven’t before, check out Simon Sinek’s classic TED talk about how great leaders inspire action.