Creating your pool of possibilities for next year

With the end of the year in sight, now's a good time to start to review how your year ended.

I've written about more metric-based approaches in previous articles, along with how to use my app to help analyze the data.

My tip today is to look at the year from another perspective. You're going to think about the highlights of the year based on how you feel about them, disconnected from the actual numbers.

When thinking about these, keep three points in mind.

• You're brainstorming so don't judge or weigh ideas, just note done all of them you have.
• These are separate questions, your answers to #2 don't have include items from #1 but they can.
• If something was outside your control, like the shipping carrier problems, ignore them and focus on what you can control or change.

Questions:

1. What positive things happened in your store?
2. What would you like to do more of next year?
3. What new things would you like to try?

Do this exercise by yourself and then again with employees or trusted advisors. This can help you brainstorm a pool of possibilities for next year that you can pick from.

Some ideas you'll be attracted to naturally as you plan and forecast your year. These are the ones you'll want to work on.

Eric Davis