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The customary flood of news stories recommending this or that as New Year’s resolutions seems to have slowed to a trickle this year. The lead business periodicals are focusing on how to keep resolutions if you make them. This surprising dearth of encouragement to business and self-improvement might be the result of baffling uncertainty in our business environments. Or, it might relate to essayists’ angst in the face of tumultuous social, political, and economic change… seemingly in all areas except the value of weight loss. The Chamber will lean into this breach with five modest proposals for those in our economic community searching for 2017 commitments to be made. Each of the five could not only heighten individual satisfaction and success, but also contribute to our collective economic vitality. Here are the Chamber’s five recommended 2017 New Year’s Resolutions. RELATIONSHIPS. I will develop new, personal relationships with three people who could help me or my business thrive. A customer, a supplier, a co-worker, an expert, a competitor, someone who influences your market... we can all identify people who can give us counsel, encouragement, new perspectives, and improved connection to the business environment in which we work. What we lost when “coffee time” business lunches, golf afternoons, a drink after work, and the like eroded away was the meat of relationships that gave us insight, comfort, counsel, and new vision. Wouldn’t we benefit from making time to talk, face-to-face about things that matter with a few more people? MARKETS. I will implement a behavior to address a significant change in the market in which I work. The first step is to ask, “What are the most important changes in the market-space in which I work?” If you are a business owner or manager those might be changes related to your sales processes, your product, or ongoing interactions with customers or suppliers. If you are an employee or independent contractor your “market” will probably be the business(es) you work for or the technologies and techniques of the services you provide. Once you have identified the most important change in your market or profession, consider how you or your business might take best advantage of that change. Does that change call for a new behavior or strategy? Does it require learning a new skill or implementing a new process? Is the solution as simple as changing a priority or an attitude? Most importantly, what is the best opportunity – what should be tackled first? And, is the best immediate resolution to research more, to experiment, or to seek counsel? The trick here is likely to make a narrow, achievable commitment. We all have a long list of things that we could do that would improve performance. “if only…” The bottom line to market adaptation is two-fold: “Don’t keep doing things that don’t work; and, to the extent possible, make changes that are incremental rather than categorical.” COMMUNICATIONS. I will improve the perception that an identified person or constituency has of me or my business. Most of us can identify opportunities to improve our “brand,” whether those are the impressions of our customers, our bosses, our co-workers, or customers we wish we had. Sometimes this is a question of revising or repairing a constituent’s view of us, but often it is simply informing them or reinforcing their current sense of us. The communications that we resolve to make could be a strategic campaign of advertising or media presence. But it could also be as simple as “addressing” them differently: a new polish, a routine of calls or emails, or just a daily smile. The gift of this resolution is that improving the perception others have of us generally makes us feel better too. LEARNING. I will learn something that will improve my performance and apply that learning to my work or business. We are all learning, all the time; it is simply the nature of our era. But we also tend to have a list of things we “ought” to learn but don’t. The range of these things is broad, from basic know-how like making the most of Google Plus or Excel, to improving our understanding of economic forces, technological trends, or evolving market forces. The question to be answered by this resolution is not, “What do I have to learn to stay current?” (which you are probably doing anyway) but, rather “What could I learn that would get me ahead of the curve?” TIME MANAGEMENT. I will develop and implement practices that insure better management of my time. This might be described as the promise to make good on my promises; surely, the single most frequent cause of New Year’s Resolution failure is the encroachment of existing routines, demands, promises and expectations that elbow out our better intentions. One of the most important lessons in the professional practice of project management is that spending less than 15% of all project time on planning (at a minimum) will result in the loss of time, money, and/or quality of the project outcomes. The time necessary to make a good plan is always good time management. Another key element is to identify tasks, routines, and expectations that are less productive than your resolutions and eliminate them from your day. While the basic nature of our era is uncertainty, change is guaranteed. This year and this decade require new priorities and attention paid to how we allocate our effort. Perhaps we should stop calling them New Year’s Resolutions. They are simply Our Plans.