You’ve made it to the midway point. You set annual goals and objectives roughly six months ago and you’ve got another six months ahead of you to close the loop and wrap them up. Maybe it’s a shorter window. Maybe you created a 6-week plan and you’re now about 3 weeks in. Maybe it’s just the middle of your week. The point is, you’re about halfway to the finish line.
Now is a good moment to catch your breath, assess progress, identify adjustments, and evaluate whether this is still the right race to be running.
It’s not that you’ve been in a prolonged, high-stress press moving forward to the finish line. You could be, sure, but maybe it’s just business as usual as you make your way through the timeline of your goals. Either way, the midway point is a good time to pause a moment.
Have you ever spent a day with a really good, engrossing book? You curled into a chair and started reading. Hours later you look up and realize you need a moment for your eyes to adjust from the printed page to the world around you. Your body is starting to feel the impact of being in one spot with minimal movement for so long. When you get up, the stretch feels good as your muscles release the mild tension of inactivity. You realize you’re hungry and lunch might hit the spot. You’re going to jump right back into that book as soon as you can, sure. You’ve got to find out how it ends, after all!
But at this moment, this space of moving around and refocusing is suddenly the welcome relief you didn’t realize you needed. This mid-point break from your goals can be similar. It’s a moment to refocus on the task at hand by looking away for a moment.
Before you settle back into the tasks at hand, use this moment to assess how things are going? Are you still on track to hit key milestones at the target you identified at the start? Are you seeing any early fruits from the work? Does the path you set out on look like it’s still the right way to get where you want to go?
As an example, let’s consider if January marked the launch of a 12-month plan to expand your market into a new sector using a targeted digital marketing strategy. You set a series of milestones to help measure your progress: growth in social media followers, incremental growth in the sector, rate of re-orders from new and existing customers, reviews from media and influencers that have an audience in the sector you’re targeting, or any number of other measures. At this point, midway through the year, pull that data and spend some time considering the story it’s telling you.
Once the data has told you its story, it’s time to decide what step to take next. Maybe your targets are within a reasonable range of expectations. You’re just going to settle back into the rhythm you’ve already established and keep moving forward with the plan you set out from the start.
On the other hand, maybe you realize that you’re seeing more fruit from your social media account on TikTok than Instagram – or vice versa. Maybe it’s worth adjusting your allotted time/marketing dollars in the platform that’s been better performing and pulling back a bit on the other. Maybe you’re seeing real growth in an area you didn’t anticipate and the question is now whether you press deeper into that space or just keep letting it percolate as a self-developing side-quest while your focus stays sharp on your original plans.
Maybe you see an increase in new orders, but repeat sales aren’t following through. Your team should take a look at what you’re doing and make a plan on what to do next. What changes might you make to lift targets that are falling short? What unexpected strengths should you lean further into? Maybe growth is coming but it’s slower than expected. Do you need to shift your milestones and timelines? Was your original target too ambitious? Should you adjust expectations to match the reality you’re seeing?
What if you’ve reached few, if any, of the targeted milestones you set at the start of this endeavor? What if this experiment is yielding no fruit? You’ve discovered that the sector you targeted isn’t seeing the same value in what you’re offering that you do. Your due diligence during this evaluation period shows some hurdles you’re not in a position to overcome at this stage of your business. You could make some adjustments, but would it be enough? Do you just keep at it to your original end point? Or do you call it?
Here’s the thing, that’s not something we can answer for you on this page, nor is it something you can determine just by reading these thoughts. It’s something your team is going to need to arrive at after evaluating the data you’ve collected, asking the hard questions, and considering the cost of sticking with it compared to the adjusted ROI projections.
Maybe you make adjustments and keep with it. Maybe the adjustment is to call the experiment complete and set a new goal informed by the lessons you’ve learned. Either way, it’s better to figure it out now than later.
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