Column by Richard Randall
As 2025 comes to an end, leaders will naturally be thinking about how to position their organizations for continued or greater success in 2026. Here are some New Year’s resolutions that I believe will help any organization.
Do a better job of strategic management: Strategic planning is just one aspect of strategic management and it’s an important one, but there is so much more that can and should be done. Top management should be laser-focused on implementing the strategic plan and measuring results.
If your leadership team isn’t reviewing your strategic plan at least once a month, make a commitment to start. Make sure each strategic initiative has a detailed action plan with both schedule dates and accountability for timely completion identified. When an action item is late or at risk of being late, insist that the team develop countermeasures to recover and keep the overall schedule on track.
Make sure metrics are in place, not only to measure the implementation schedule, but also to test if the strategies and tactics that are being implemented are working. There is no sense in endlessly pushing strategies or tactics that don’t work. If you can’t figure out why they aren’t working and fix it, generate better ideas and update the plan.
Good strategic management takes a lot of commitment and discipline. It’s not something a leader should delegate.
If you don’t have a strategic plan, get started creating one: Every business should have a strategic plan. Even a small new business should have a business plan that identifies goals and actions to achieve the goals. Without a plan you are taking a journey without a roadmap. Create a plan and start managing with it.
Define and implement a pricing strategy: Nothing has more impact on your bottom line than pricing. That is especially true in an environment where inflation and tariffs are eroding profits. A one percent price increase for a business that is making ten percent net profit raises profits by ten percent. Price is a huge lever, but prices are often handled in very undisciplined ways.
A good pricing strategy will define how prices are to be determined and by whom. It will establish a delegation of authority for discounting. It may stratify customers based on their complexity of needs and their price sensitivity.
Pricing is far too powerful and important to be left to chance and in today’s world doing what we’ve always done is not going to be a winning strategy.
Get serious about developing your team: To borrow a metaphor from business author Jim Collins, do you have the right people on your bus and are they in the right seats? When people don’t seem to be right, it’s usually either a competence issue or an attitude issue.
When you have competence issues the next question is whether the person is trainable. If so, get a training plan in place. If not, then you need to decide if the person can still be a valuable team member in a different seat on the bus.
Attitude issues are tougher to solve. If the issue is due to someone’s basic personality or baggage coming from somewhere else, you probably can’t solve it. If the issue is due to conditions in your organization that should be addressed, then perhaps you have a chance of success. The worst thing you can do with attitude issues is to not address them at all.
The new year is almost here. Take some quality time now to think about and make some resolutions.
Richard Randall is founder and president of management consulting firm New Level Advisors in Springettsbury Township, York County. Email him at [email protected].
Executives Insights is a recurring feature from biznewsPA that provides local business executives and leaders a platform for sharing advice and perspective with the business community of Central Pennsylvania. If you are interested in contributing an executive insight, email [email protected].
