Every successful sports team takes advantage of the halftime break to make adjustments for the second half of the game. Successful businesses do the same. Now is the perfect time to huddle up your team to put together your game plan for the second half of the year.
What are your top three priorities as a company? Is there one of these that’s more critical than the rest? If so, place that priority at the top of the list. It’s important that everyone on the team knows what these priorities are and is doing whatever they can do to support them.
As they say, if everything is a priority then nothing is. What do you want to accomplish still in 2017? That is the question.
If you listened in on a halftime talk by one of the great coaches, you would hear them emphasizing the top three areas to focus on to win the game. As a business leader, it’s your responsibility to be the coach. Huddle up your team and lay out the game plan. If you don’t know what the game plan is, huddle up your team anyway and ask them to help figure it out.
Once the top three priorities are clear, have each person consider what they can do in their own roles or areas of responsibility to help. Each person may have a different contribution. These commitments made to the team should be turned into SMART goals (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, time-bound), captured in writing and reviewed weekly to ensure there is some traction on them.
Sometimes there is no change to the game plan at halftime. That’s fine, too. But still go through the process of reviewing the plan and reiterating it to the team so it’s fresh in everyone’s minds. How many times have you seen a team go into the locker room at halftime with a big lead, only to become complacent and lose the game in the second half? It happens all the time.
It’s halftime and your team is waiting for the coach to take the lead.
Now go forth.
