Ok, I don’t want to freak you out here, but did anyone else spot that we’ve only got 43 working days until Xmas?
…. only 40 if you’re shutting shop on 19th December
…. and 1 less if you’re in Victoria, thanks to the Melbourne Cup
With only 40 working days in hand, what’s the rest of your 2025 plan looking like?
- Overly ambitious?
- Deliberately cautious?
- Not even looked yet – now it’s panic stations!
Our October was galloping faster than a Melbourne Cup contender, so we stopped to take stock before we hit the wall.
That sounds like a mixed metaphor doesn’t it? Actually it’s not – I once clung onto a runaway horse for about 30 minutes before I had to point him at a very high wall and pray he didn’t a) jump it or b) crash into it.
My horse is the work of course. The wall is 40 days. I don’t fancy crashing or jumping, and I’m sure you don’t either. So we’ve got to stop this runaway beast right now.
My alternative to hauling desperately on the reins is to use our own RAPIDStrategy® system.
Here’s the jist of how it works:
- List up your existing deliverables between now and when you’d like to stop work for Xmas (then take 5mins to recover from your shock at the length of the list)
- Decide what your value and difficulty criteria is – to help you prioritise
- Rate your list against that criteria
- Allocate your deliverables to the relevant quadrant based on that rating
- Take the action that the system dictates – Activate (just do it), Negotiate, Delegate or Escalate.
Using this approach, TeamBOLD now knows how we are going to get that horse under control.
Want to peek under the lid at TeamBOLD? Come on in….
Our Criteria to prioritise for this period:
- Difficulty: Time, Cost, Stress levels.
- Value: Relationships, Reputation, Revenue.
Our Priorities
- Activate: Launch More Impact, More Easily globally
- When you work with the world’s biggest publisher, and you’re getting a book on a shelf on a certain date, there’s no choice but to just do it.
- My top tip for activate? Take your time to plan this out, don’t just jump in. Think twice, act once – not the other way around.
- Negotiate: Plan and schedule our 2026 inhouse and public programs
- If any pre-Xmas preparation can be pushed into 2026 without risking our value criteria (relationships, reputation, revenue) – then it should be open for negotiation.
- My top tip for negotiate? Be ready to compromise, and know what you will and won’t compromise on to find an alternative.
- Delegate: Audit your entire business operation
- For us, Xmas is a down time, so if we are going to turn over every stone and document every blade of grass, there’s only one time to do it. But the stress levels of doing it inhouse in the next 40 days pushes this initiative from Activate to Delegate.
- My top tip for delegate? It doesn’t have to be downwards to your team, it can be upwards (don’t overplay it!), back to the stakeholder to self-serve (DIY might be better than waiting), or outsourced to another team or a vendor.
- Escalate: Deliver only 1 client event a week in this period
- I had to have a hard conversation with myself about not taking on more than this. Because when I push me, I push we. Team stress levels? Not fair.
- My top tip for escalate? If you can’t reprioritise fairly ruthlessly with this framework, seek guidance on your criteria from your leader – escalate your 40 day prioritisation before you hit the wall.
For your own sanity and your team health, taking a pause to prioritise and plan out your next 40 days might just rein in some predictable pre-holiday stress levels.
Give it a shot – I hope you back a winner!
