Soon it will be Thanksgiving and then a blur until the end of the year. This is the time of year that life always becomes crazy… even crazier than the rest of the year.

From an HR perspective, it’s time for Open Enrollments, Annual Salary Adjustments, Bonus Distribution and planning for the next year. From a business perspective, you’re looking at your budgets, your revenue and/or profit, and planning for the next year if you haven’t done so already.

Add to that your personal lives, keeping up with all the events and celebrations this holiday season, and ensuring that you take the time to thank the people in your lives, both professional and personal.

My hope is that the remainder of this year is meaningful to you and doesn’t become just another list of activities. Try to be mindful (how often do you hear this in business!) of what’s ahead and take the necessary steps to continue moving forward, but also take time to appreciate the present and what’s in front of you today.

Here are a few thoughts to consider as you wind down for the year:

  • Maintain and recognize the talent in your organizations – appreciate all that they do instead of focusing on ‘what they don’t do.’
  • Take your ideas off the back-burner and try to execute them and/or make something happen, especially if it will create positive energy around the office, such as implementing the remote work policy, allowing flexible scheduling, or starting a community involvement program.
  • Dust off your core values and communicate and reinforce to your teams.
  • Provide more flexibility around the holidays; trying to take the 100 items off of our to-do-lists inevitably becomes frantic, chaotic and challenging during the holidays and therefore more stressful for your team members.
  • Take a moment to talk to your neighbor, volunteer in the local food bank or get involved in something different this year (remember those items on your to-do-list for 2018).
  • Forgive and let go. There is so much anger in our country right now. Perhaps we can be thankful for who we are and what we have both personally and professionally, and recognize that every day counts!
  • Enjoy life each moment each day brings to us and enjoy the people that are in our life – family, friends, peers, teams, etc.

So, I created another to-do list for 2018, but this one is the most important one!

Happy Holidays to our all our clients, colleagues, peers and teams!