Maximise Your Post-Holiday Momentum: Turn Big Ideas into Reality
Transforming Your Holiday Reflections into Tangible Business Success
Returning from a rejuvenating holiday often brings with it a surge of energy, a renewed perspective, and a fresh outlook on business challenges.
On your return, will you let yourself fall back into the day-to-day or do the hard thing and focus on making your ideas happen.
In this post, I’ll take you through steps that will help you harness the post-holiday momentum, organise your thoughts, engage your team, and transform your visionary ideas into tangible business success.
1. Set Aside Dedicated Time
As I mentioned in the previous post in this series on using your holiday time to take your care business forward, it’s crucial to carve out dedicated time for idea implementation.
The vast majority of strategies fail, not at the creation phase but at the execution phase.
Set aside the time to do this either whilst still on holiday or upon your return and treat this time as you would an important meeting or project deadline. This is about planning to plan – about setting aside time to plan how and when you intend to turn your ideas into reality.
Block the time in your calendar and don’t move it or let something else replace it unless it’s for a real emergency. It is far too easy to let ideas just fade because time wasn’t set aside to turn them into reality.
Ideally, you’ll set aside time during the day when you are most focused and productive. For many, me included, that’s first thing in the morning.
By intentionally setting aside this time, you send a clear signal to yourself and your team that your commitment to bringing your big ideas to life is unwavering.
2. Organise Your Thoughts
Take time to go through any notes you made whilst on holiday and make sure you still feel as strongly about these thoughts and ideas as you did then.
• Categorise them into short-term and long-term goals.
• Prioritise them according to the difference they will make to your care business and its success. For example, you may decide as a long term goal you really want to open another care home, however, right now, with your costs far higher than they’ve ever been, you really need to review your current client fees. The short-term goal of making sure you are receiving the right fees will have a much bigger positive impact and should therefore be a top priority. Getting this right will also help you achieve your expansion goal.
• Did you note down outstanding tasks that need to be done, such as completing the Data Security and protection Toolkit (DSPT), in order to remain compliant? Get tasks you may have been avoiding off your desk. These are quick victories that will feel good to complete.
• Build a big picture of your ideas/goals and check that they don’t conflict with each other or pull your business/organisation in a way that will negatively impact other parts of it. Create a mind map to visually connect your ideas.
This process of organising your thoughts not only clarifies your vision but also paves the way for effective communication with your team.
3. Break Down into Clear Milestones
Transforming grand ideas into reality requires breaking them down into smaller and smaller milestones and manageable tasks. Create a roadmap from where you are now to where you want to be. Set the major milestones along this path.
A strategy can be a long-term (5-year) plan that needs to be broken down into manageable, one or two-year major milestones or strategic destinations.
You could for example be the owner of a single care home and you wish to expand to say 5 care homes. That 5-year strategy can be broken down into clear (annual) strategic destinations that are then broken into smaller milestones.
A key milestone within this first strategic destination, or even a strategic destination in its own right, could be to make sure that your current care home is receiving the fees needed to be financially healthy. This will give you the financial stability and foundation to be looked on favourably should you need investment or a loan. (Same principle applies to home care services.)
These should then be broken down more and more into manageable chunks that cover weeks or months.
These “chunks” need to have measurable goals (what you want to achieve), objectives (how you intend to achieve them) and tactics (the tasks needed to be carried out to achieve those objectives and hence goals).
Add dates so that this roadmap is also a timeline of when you expect milestones to be reached. Identify risks and threats so you can eliminate or avoid them.
Delegate responsibilities accordingly.
By breaking down large goals into smaller steps that have measurable targets and deadlines, you only need to focus on reaching that next step. (For example, the first step to receiving the right fees is to review your current fees.)
If you reach that next step in time and the targets are met then you know you’re on track.
This approach not only prevents overwhelm but also allows you to see progress more quickly, boosting your motivation to keep going.
4. Engage Your Team and Set Clear Responsibilities
Implementing big ideas shouldn’t be a solo endeavour.
Rally your team around you by explaining why your idea needs to be implemented. What’s the positive impact of achieving it? What’s the potential negative impact of not implementing it and carrying on as usual.
Receiving the right fees has clear positives and not receiving fees them clear negatives, not least leading to the care home needing to close.
Clear responsibilities are very important. Someone needs to be responsible for reporting the results back to you and they need to understand that it is their responsibility to get the information they need.
To meet the first fee-review milestone, this person will need someone in finance to provide the latest average monthly costs, average hourly rates of care (and nurse) teams and the extra employer cost of On-cost and Cover cost.
The person responsible will also need a senior carer or nurse may be responsible for reviewing client needs to ensure that a fee review is based on the care the person needs now rather than the care they needed when last reviewed or first became a client.
They will need someone (if not them) to create new fees based on the new costs, the care the person needs and the healthy profit the organisation needs.
This person needs to understand that if they don’t have the information you need then the fault lies with them and not the person they didn’t receive the information from.
Accountability encourages proactive action and a sense of responsibility, driving the project forward with dedication and determination.
Encourage open discussions and invite team members to contribute their insights and suggestions. By involving your team from the outset, you not only gain diverse perspectives but also build a sense of ownership and enthusiasm for the project.
5. Review Regularly and Be Flexible
You’ve created a roadmap with timelines and clear targets and milestones and responsibilities. You’ve hopefully also identified the risk or threats that could knock you off course such as a member of the team going on holiday or off sick. (Mitigation: make sure more than one team member can carry out each task.)
Tracking progress is vital. This is where so many strategies and projects fall down.
It’s vital that you, or someone you have delegated this responsibility to, monitors progress and follows up if targets and milestones look like they are going to be missed or have been missed.
This is where reducing targets to smaller steps is so important. Let’s say you aim to review the care needs of all of your 40 clients over a four week period.
If you review at the end of this four week period it’s too late to act on problems along the way which have caused the targets to be missed.
By reducing the four weeks further and reviewing these smaller increments you have time to spot if the task is veering off course and do something about it.
If you review weekly (5-day working week) you know by Friday if you are on track because to review 40 over the month you need to review 10 a week.
Better still, for a relatively short stage like this you could decide to monitor daily. Carrying out 10 client reviews in a 5-day week is the equivalent of two reviews a day.
Simply check progress at the end of each day and you will know very early on if a task is not being carried out as it needs to be and have time to get it back on track.
Reducing targets to this kind of granularity not only gives you time to respond to issues and adapt to ensure the end target is still met, it also gives you the real-time feedback you need to adapt your strategy plan if necessary.
While having a well-defined plan is crucial, remember that the business landscape can be unpredictable.
No matter how well you plan, unforeseen challenges can arise, which could impact what it is you are trying to achieve.
Be open to adjusting your strategy or approach based on emerging opportunities or unforeseen challenges.
If a short task like this client review hits a problem. It will have a knock-on effect to the larger, long-term strategy it is a part of. In this case, to make sure your organisation is financially healthy and remains so.
This is where having a system for creating, implementing, reviewing and if necessary adapting your strategy becomes vital.
Flexibility ensures that your big ideas remain adaptable and resilient in the face of change.
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Returning from a holiday with a treasure trove of big ideas is a fantastic starting point for creating positive change within your business.
By setting aside dedicated time, organizing your thoughts, involving your team, and implementing a strategy plan, you can turn these ideas into tangible outcomes.
Remember that the journey from idea to implementation might have its challenges, but with the right mindset and approach, you can navigate them successfully and achieve remarkable business success. So, seize the post-holiday momentum, and let your big ideas shape the future of your care business.
In my goal example I focused on getting the right fees to keep your care home or home care service financially healthy and sustainable. If you would like to know more about the steps to take to achieving this vital goal, read this short report, 5 Steps to make Your Care Business Financially Secure in 2023 and Beyond . In this report I take you through these steps in detail.