… Focus in 2014

Happy New Year to all readers, I hope you have had a safe and enjoyable holiday season.

Back to work for many this week, and therefore a time we start to think about our ‘New Year’s Resolutions’ – all the things we want to do differently, or areas where we plan to implement changes this year.

Over recent years I started to use an approach I learned from Chris Brogan – using 3 words as focus points, rather than these often abandoned resolutions.

In the past year or two I have lost focus on blogging – in favour of a very hectic client delivery programme, longer articles for publication in journals and presentations at conferences. So my first, and primary, word for 2014 is FOCUS.

These focus words are meant to convey a meaning and concept – and like any word these meanings may be perceived differently by different people.

The word FOCUS is to remind me to maintain a focus and follow through in three  specific areas;

• Keeping a balance between paid work and the unpaid, but intellectually stimulating, activity of reading and writing.
  • Over the past 2 years I have been so heavily focussed on the demands of the paid work that I have neglected other areas.
  • This should also enable me to keep up regular correspondence with my professional network and to attend local chapter meetings of a the various professional institutions I belong to.
• Focus on blogging – where I intend to get back to writing  2-3 posts per week.
  • This is also a driver to make me focus on writing about things that interest me, and that may mean a change in focus for the subject matter of this blog.
• Focus on my focus areas
  • Just like many New Year Resolutions, I have lost focus on my focus areas – this is to remind me to keep focus on these areas throughout 2014.

My other two words for 2014 are Agile and Praxis. Praxis is a word I used as a focus area in 2010, this technique does not mean you have to have new and different focus areas every year – it is fine to go back and renew your attention on subject as required. Praxis is a word that may be unfamiliar to many, and I will expand on it in the next post.

Just like we do with our Programme Management activities in the workplace, we need to focus on the aspects that are most relevant to our own context.

Agile is area of thinking and practice that has caught my attention over the past year. This focus area is to keep me on track with learning more about this exciting area of development in enterprise management.

It will be particularly important during the first quarter of 2014 as the application of Agile practice to BC and Resilience is the theme of my presentation at the Continuity Insights Management Conference in late April.

This concept if also to keep me focussed on preparing other papers, presentations and blog posts around the use of Agile in all areas of enterprise management throughout the year.

The 3 Words technique is a tool you can use with your team at work and as part of planning for your Risk Management or BCM Programme. But in this context remember the idea is about words with “shared meaning”, so you cannot come up with words that convey meaning to you but they do not resonate with the rest of your team.

There are a couple of exercises in my paper “Embedding culture into BCM” that may help you to develop these ideas in your team – we need to understand people and how they work in groups before we can hope to achieve meaningful results through these teams.

What and how are you hoping to change this year?

When it comes to risk, resilience and BC/M – are you really planning to do things differently, or do different things, this year?

What would your 3 words be?