Your Professional goals are important, your personal and wellness goals even more.

Around this time of year, I have this bad habit of coming up with about 15 different decisions on regards to productivity, fitness, academy, friends, family and nutrition. — Calling my auntie every week, finally stop drinking soda, stretching for 10 minutes a day, learn C#, — and attempting to start all of them at once. Around mid January, I find myself stuck on commitments and overdosed on financial responsibilities, feeling disappointed somehow mentally exhausted and not very surprised that I’m no longer committed to a single one. My silver glittery promise to a full moon is now swimming in the bottom of the kitchen sink. The path to improvement is not an easy one. Just like on your personal goals there are lot of distractions; the IT industry is full competition. I’m an IT girl, I physically go to work to an IT company in a building downtown , and I cannot separate my wellness from my work. Walking 10 blocks from my car to the office is part of my fitness, arriving with a clear head to works is part of the firm’s productivity. So yeah, not only your personal goals have an impact to a lot of people but the resolutions themselves can be strangely similar. Ultimately, we want to be smarter, more present and focused on being kind to others and ourselves. Effectiveness on you quickly shows off and so does the image of a business when you are sane and sound.

Your business goals are important, your IT strategy even more

Speaking strictly on technology for business, standards evolve constantly, startups boom out of nowhere and you feel the pressure to keep up. Your goal should not be stay afloat but give that next step you are waiting for. Same with youth and learning, you’re not getting any younger love, but when you have a plan, and the right amount of time, money, resources, technology and effort are in place, any goal is hit high and hard. That is why having a plan will avoid drowning, with no reason. Having a comprehensive IT strategy (information technology strategy) will outline how your business will meet technology and measure up your business goals. By end of year you will know with great detail how and when your revenue was generated. BPM is a good idea.

Fact: Psychological studies mentions that resistance can be overcome by setting goals that tap into what we find meaningful and it reflects our needs.

The idea for this article, my idea, is to help you understand that the same structure, passion and steps to reach your goals can be applied to business goals. The mindset we use for our personal resolutions and the thrive to get them through is not confined to our personal lives and pushes out through every cell of your being. A small positive change can go a long way both in life and in a business. Along this article you will find personal life examples to point out business ones, so your business IT can benefiting from your passion, your mindset and you.

Where do I start?

If you want to be able to run 10km and you are almost… somewhere, start by looking at the existing data. How am I measuring my distance? Where do I store how much am I running? and how can I use it to trai better? It’s easy to get overwhelmed by a whole slew of magic instant apps or personal trainers. Start straight, look at your data. and follow an in depth analysis of it, what you want from it and in what is most meaningful to you.

Use advanced analytics and artificial intelligence to make better data-driven decisions for you. Machine learning algorithms will automate many interpretations and evaluation processes that would otherwise be cumbersome and lengthy. Management strategies require reliable and quality data for accurate insights. There is no way around it, a trustworthy predictive analysis can help you to invest your time and money wisely for the upcoming year.

Evaluate your current IT strategy, find its strengths and its weakness, refine your internal systems and enforce your process success factors.

Automate where possible…it saves time.

Like you did not know that.

Weightlifting professionals start their 100 kg goal by practicing the technique with no load before they build up on weight. They work in pairs, so, while one of them trains and the other one reviews the excellence of the technique, controls the movement and measures the results. And guess what, the aimed weight is reached within a milestone or goal framework and reviewed periodically as your body gets stronger. Two individuals are needed, the executioner and the controller. BusinessTech infrastructure and software, work similarly, you need executioner and a controller for processes and your results. If you haven’t any, this upcoming year, start fresh and straight or adapt to a harder environment.

Review and evaluate your short and long term goals, and, adapt & update your current IT strategy to ensure it remains consistent with this year’s numbers. Fine tune your digital transformation one goal at a time.

• Go mobile: more people connect to the internet today through mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets than via fixed devices like PCs. Get an app running!
• Go machine-wise: use technological applications that model business rules. QFlow is a great idea.
• Go social: twitter, instagram, facebook….learn about your customers. communicate with your stakeholders or gather even more behavioral information.
• Go shareable: change for a platform that is non-proprietary and facilitates data sharing across different parts of an organization without compromising security or office space. Qexpeditive / Intellikon is an awesome tool.

Extend your achievements to your people

Going digital is as much about transforming the culture of a company as it is about using new digital technologies.

There is something about sharing or making public that switches the accountability of the thing you’re communicating. Strange but the synergy works. Your employees goals should follow your business’s goals.

In order for this to happen, share your resolutions with your employees and remind them of those. It is certain that smaller incremental steps help to lead to massive changes over the course of a year.

Here’s a few tips:

• Gives employee something to strive for and can help give them a sense of being appreciated and needed.
• Cascading helps create a sense of community among the various employees and the different departments in your business.
• Last but not least and very in fashion these days is employee morale. Everybody’s job and time must mean something to them and to the organization as a whole. Ever heard of tracking employee time and therefore productivity? Check this

The cool thing here is that when you do succeed, the people you shared stuff with will the motivation to celebrate with you.

Your organization as a whole must be fit to accept technology and change, an agile-organization like should be able to responding to market shifts and advances in automation.Your IT strategy could benefit of some consulting services in this matter.

Extend your goals to the community

This is the best part, how could we forget this?. Gandhi did his thing, but you should enjoy your result, show off your smile, mainstream your innovational products or your successful marketing strategy. Going online and to show off a little is good for you, a lot on how much, and a little on how.

One of your goals could be to increase the impact of what you do to the local community. Integrating other companies and implementing shared tech provides a sense of achievement and unexpectedly you will be looking forward to continuing to change your community for the better… and meeting new partners.

Prepare For Upcoming Changes.

Preparing ahead is key. Same with your business. Not being a part of your sector changes in accordance to technology can be very costly. Having a plan to adapt to and perhaps even pioneer it is the way to ensure long-term growth and success…now that we are talking let me make a suggestion.

Start getting a hold of the Blockchain world and its applications like, now. Like it or not it’s here and many companies are already using blockchain for company payments. However, the topic is expanding and expanding and put into use over other non-financial areas like contracts, cloud storage increasing security and efficiency, so we strongly suggest to get involved in the topic.

Challenge yourself

Aim for more and scale for expansion into larger markets. Not a dream but on the same scale of your New year’s resolution list. There is a how.

Zendesk, live chat and other AI services is growing so with all machine learning-driven products while reducing operational costs. Standardize and prioritize emerging business areas that leverage digital tools and technologies. Finding the balance between established and new areas can be extremely tricky.

So what’s the next step?

With proper planning and focus you’ll be able to lead your business to success in 2019. If you’re not sure which tasks to prioritize,try looking at some of our local successful business stories. Make your objectives to be more connected with yourself, your team and your community, not less. To break up our days with self-care so that we can be our most productive and happiest selves.

If by now the words of “It’s just Business”do not seem very personal to you, I haven’t made my mark.

If you’re eager to fill your 2019 with small victories, these challenges are for you! Whether you want to be informed on what we can do for you …we can’t wait to hear how you doing with your New Year’ resolutions. Just make sure you follow us on Medium, or LinkedIn so you can be updated on our new technologies and cool projects, or maybe just look at our pictures, tweet, message, or email your comments!

Be proud of yourself of your job and your company — this is just the beginning!