Remember your first day back at work this year? That surge of energy, those fresh plans, that sense of possibility? We all start the year with good intentions. But as Mike Tyson famously puts it, “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face..."

Here are three practices to help you stay the course when you get ‘punched in the face’. These practices are great for use in your personal planning, at your next team offsite for the year, or as a set of principles for how you lead every day.

1. Define Purpose Before Goals

Goals can be powerful drivers – or dangerous mirages. Goals give us something tangible to aim at and help us track progress. Yet goalposts shift. As your context changes, your short-term aims can become irrelevant in relation to your higher purpose.

A clear purpose is less subject to an evolving context. Your purpose is your greater why behind the what of your goals. It’s the thing that gives them meaning and shape.

Imagine a team that set an ambitious sales target for the year, only to have their market completely disrupted by new technology. With a clear purpose of 'enabling small businesses to thrive,' they could pivot from their original sales goals to developing new solutions their clients actually needed.

When you define your purpose first, your goals have room to evolve. Don’t let your goals define your purpose. Do it the other way around.

‍What's the greater 'why' behind your current goals?

2. Create Adaptive Capacity

There’s one guarantee for what will happen this year: the unanticipated. To respond effectively, you need adaptive capacity. That’s the ability to:

• evolve and adapt in the face of uncertainty
• create systems and cultures that sustain people’s performance and wellbeing 
• to embrace not knowing, and
• to learn quickly.

You can’t run your life or your business at max capacity all the time. The most effective people and organisations build in resilience to the inevitable stresses that arise. Remember, it’s ultimately about effectiveness, not efficiency. 

Here's what adaptive capacity looks like in action:

• For organisations: fostering a culture of experimentation where small failures are accepted as part of innovation and lear
• For individuals: building strong personal learning routines, such as dedicating time each week to experiment with new methods or reflect on lessons learned from challenges
• For teams: cross-training team members so they can fill multiple roles when needed

‍Where are you or your team currently running at maximum capacity? What's one small change you could make to create more breathing room?

3. Make Space for Sense-Making

Most of us are great at delivery: making stuff happen. Yet when that’s all we’re focused on, we miss the opportunity for discovery: learning, improvement, and growth. That’s often because we love the adrenaline of achievement, and anything else feels unproductive. Yet empty space is valuable space. We just need to use it well.

The most effective leaders and leadership teams I work with deliberately create space for sense-making. Regardless of what’s happening in their immediate context, they’ll have non-negotiable rituals and schedules that build in the time and space for slowing down and making sense of things. 

That could look like:

• Making Friday afternoons a clear space to reflect on the week
• Regular coaching or mentoring sessions that provide the space to dig deeper into what’s happening and why 
• A quarterly team offsite that uses sense-making questions to set the agenda (e.g. how are we bringing our purpose to life? What’s enabling that? What’s getting in the way?)

‍Where in your week could you create space for sense-making?

‍Your Navigation System

These three practices – purpose-first thinking, building adaptive capacity, and deliberate sense-making – work together as your navigation system for the year ahead. Start small: choose just one practice and experiment with it this week. 

Planes are off track 90% of the time. Staying the course isn't about rigid adherence to plans – it's about maintaining direction while adapting to changing conditions.

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For more like this, check out:

‍Create Space for Sense-Making

‍When Leaders Are Human: Navigating Complexity with Integrity, with Sir Ashley Bloomfield

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