Your staff managed to make it through the mania of yearend obligations, and now everyone seems to want to let things slide for a while. To put off until tomorrow. Or maybe spring. How do you help your employees resolve to refocus—before procrastinating becomes the new habit of the New Year?
      Deborah S. Roberts, editor of MoveThatMountain.com, offers these suggestions:
• Start with the first quarter. Begin by listing the major projects your team needs to accomplish in the first quarter of the year. Then prioritize the list. Once you’ve selected your top priority, you can direct everyone’s attention to your new mission.
• Break into smaller pieces. Now that you’ve found your mission, you need to break it into interim goals your staff can target each day, week, and month. Another key aspect of this step is to divide the goals into individual assignments so each staff member has a role in the larger mission. Your objective is to refocus your entire staff, not just a few key players.
• Provide long-term incentives. Most people launch into new projects with tremendous enthusiasm. But enthusiasm soon wanes—particularly when jobs (or missions) take a long time to accomplish. Make sure you create incentives that will motivate your team to keep going beyond the initial phases and will reward them for each success along the way.