Happy New Year! Happy New Organization!

As 2008 ends and we look forward to a new year, many of us will be making personal resolutions for 2009. No doubt they will be challenging, life transforming resolutions. They will likely affect all, or most areas of our lives - physical (our health, wellness, weight, fitness), financial (our wealth, income generation, new purchases and investments), emotional (our relationships), mental (going back to school, embarking on a new area of study, deepening our knowledge) and spiritual (commitment to spiritual discipline, deepening our connection with a higher power, serving our community). They will be motivating and inspiring, causing us to stretch, even leap out into the unknown, the hitherto unimagined for our lives. We will feel good about our resolutions, knowing that if we achieve them, we will have manifested significant personal transformation.

Many of our organizations will have just completed, or be about to complete, their annual planning exercises. I wonder – have we approached our organizations' goal-setting the same way we approach the setting of our own personal resolutions? Have we set challenging, motivating and transformational goals? Have we set goals in areas other than financial? Have we set goals for the wellness of our organization, the wellness and health of our people, the wholesomeness of the workplace? For the types of relationships we desire at work? For the way our organization commits to serving its community? For the way we as an organization learn, and how we support our team members in their own learning?

As we set our personal resolutions, it is also opportunity to set some resolutions for your organization. Look at your organization in the same way you do your life. Do not be confined or defined by the past. “History is no predictor of the future”. Decide what type of organization you desire, and then set the necessary resolutions, or goals. As you would with your life - decide what type of life you desire, and set your resolutions accordingly. Don’t worry today over whether you can or can’t achieve your personal and organizational desires. Today, it is enough to set them and believe in them.