December 29th. Midday. No man’s land in the holiday calendar.
That rare stretch between the holiday sprint and the New Year reset.
It’s the one time of year expectations fall away. People aren’t waiting on updates or follow-ups.
In fact, they prefer the opposite. A little space is the point.
It’s a special pocket of time. And this year I went all in.
I started, and finished, a 1,000-piece jigsaw puzzle. Packed away the Christmas decorations.
Watched movies with our kids, still home from university, taking up space, consuming all the food, producing piles of laundry.
And on this Tuesday night, after the kids came home from skiing, we played a game.
Not just any game. A detective game. An interactive one. Murder in Prague.
I’m a sucker for a good murder mystery. A subscription to BritBox to prove it.
In some parallel universe, I’m Detective Chief Inspector with a complicated personal life and a nose for bad guys.
You play the game online. Cast it to your TV.
The box comes complete with: Crime scene photos, Forensics reports, Files on each suspect.
You watch video interviews, as if you’re the one asking the questions.
You download cell phone records. Read text exchanges. Sort through receipts, plane tickets, handwritten notes.
Then you arrest someone.
We had a whiteboard to capture everything. The timeline. The motives. The gaps.
We made a list of each suspect, their motive, opportunity and means. And we got it wrong.
Twice before we got the right answer. Good thing we have day jobs.
Such a fun experience. One caveat.
When we got to the end, it felt flat. No drama. No big reveal. No actual bad guy going to jail.
Whatever our answer, it didn’t matter much.
We didn’t even have the pull of competition.
The five of us. All on the same team.
This game had all the elements of a great mission.
Except one. The outcome really didn’t matter much.
Without stakes, we took a wild guess. Three times.
And moved on with our day. We put time into it. We showed up. We made a guess.
But we didn’t give it more than that. I had a puzzle to finish.
Truth is…You only put more of yourself into the things that matter to you.
Your energy. Your attention. Your second and third efforts.
The same is true for any mission. The New Years’ resolution. The annual strategic plan. The big initiative. The small project.
I’m sure you and your team have all of this year’s goals locked in.
Your own version of “catch the bad guy” in all the core areas of your business.
You can probably even count all the ways you’ll do it. And still, effort will vary. Progress will stall.
You’ll wonder why people aren’t leaning in. Because not every goal matters equally to all people.
It shows up in the poor engagement scores. In stalled progress. In confusion and misalignment.
Organizations spend a lot of time planning. And very little time on what makes the plan matter.
So as you head into a new year, the question isn’t whether the goals are clear.
It’s this: What makes them matter?
The difference between time spent and effort given is meaning.
If you’d like a short diagnostic to see whether your goals are set up to earn real energy and commitment from your team,
reply to this email or reach out.
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Each week, I share something I’m learning, living, or working out in real time. It’s part storytelling, part reflection. I hope there’s something in it for you too.
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