Resolutions
It’s the time of year when people dream up ways to better themselves, and resolve—this year, finally—to take action on them.
And yet we rarely do.
We often do the same with our businesses.
Most resolutions fail, because we fail to properly estimate the gap that exists between where we’re at and where we want to be—and how much work it will take to close it.
Perhaps the best answer to this is a Last Four Months model.
Serving as a check to ambitious plans, a Last Four Months model says that what you’ve been over the last four months is—most likely—what you’ll be going forward. As Jason Lemkin of SaaStr writes:
“For sure, you can beat it. But it speaks from truth. At least — this moment in time’s truth. It just takes your average from the last fourth months, and projects forward. It doesn’t really care if one month was soft. Because it averages four. It doesn’t really care if you didn’t hire fast enough. Because you should catch up over four months. It doesn’t have an opinion on … anything.
The key here is to update this every month. Which should take about 60 seconds. If you start to grow faster, the model will automatically scale up.”
To us, this seems a lot like the work needed to hit resolutions: Small steps first, big goals second. It also seems a lot like the work Dr. James Richardson lays out in “Ramping Your Brand.”
Perhaps the best resolution is not an end goal. Perhaps it is giving yourself the permission to move at the right speed, so you can, in fact, move faster laster.
As Lemkin writes: “Optimism is good. Delusion, though, can be dangerous.”