Who cares about font size!

Yesterday my 5-year-old daughter declares to me "Dad it's Christmas next week!" (Turns out she had the concepts of weeks and months confused. Oh to be five years old again.)

You may be finding yourself counting down the days until the end-of-year holidays too.

Last week I spent one lunchtime with the local team from Kainga Ora. We talked about being stretched in too many directions. About rushing from one problem to the next. And having our best-laid plans getting away from us.

Your community doesn't care about font size!

It reminded me of a coaching a newly formed community engagement team in a local council a few years back when I was a partner at Business Lab.

It was a visionary programme of work... but it never really got off the ground.

The team was never able to take action on their aspirations.

At one meeting, they bemoaned being pulled into lots of arguments about font size and colour that month. Within 6 months, almost everybody in the team had left the organisation...

It's exhausting when you never have time or space to breathe, reflect and rest.

Now is a good time to get reflective about your year and your priorities for 2024. I like to use a simple 3-question framing such as:

• What are we celebrating from this year?
• What should we do differently next year?
• What should we stop doing next year?

Note that none of those questions ask you to do anything new. I find that many teams are always adding new things to the mix... without taking anything away.

So yes. The holidays are near. You may wish they were as close as my daughter thinks they are! If that's you, it may be time for a reflective kind of conversation.