I always love the start of the new year because it offers an opportunity to set the tone for the year across the company.

With so much planning for next year’s strategy taking place between October through December, now comes the fun part: putting your Strategic Plan into action.

While the strategy is hopefully something you, as a Strategy and Operations Leader, can get excited about, for me, what really makes this a season for excitement is bringing alongside your entire company and rallying around collective 2024 Themes. These themes are the rallying cries that align everyone across the organization around the same goals.

Maybe it’s my background in team sports, or my passion for building, but I absolutely love this season for the camaraderie and the excitement that starts with aligning around a unified view of your company’s strategic direction.

Before the break, I wrote about ensuring employees are playing from the same sheet of music heading into 2024. But as we think about heading into the new year and rallying our teams around common goals, I absolutely had to share a recent video put together by one of the companies we work with, Holiday Extras.

For those who want to see what it looks like to invest in building connection and alignment, hyping up your teams, and clearly communicating your Themes, Holiday Extras takes it to a whole new level with The Goalfather.

Wow. Absolutely incredible. 💯

I have a lot of conversations with folks about how to communicate Themes for the new year and set the stage in company kickoffs, but this is an entirely different animal. Holiday Extras went above and beyond in setting the tone for the new year, ensuring that they are getting employees focused on the goals, but also excited about the year to come.

How are you rolling out your 2024 strategy to your organization? Are you doing anything creative?

I’d love to share some other fun ways Strategy and Operations leaders within this community are hyping up their teams in the next edition (with your permission)!

And thank you to Holiday Extras for letting us share theirs.

If you’re in the process of planning your company kickoffs or finalizing Themes for the coming year and want to run some of those ideas by our team, please reach out. I always love having conversations with folks and sharing best practices we see across our customers, like Holiday Extras.

Thanks all for today... short and sweet. Have a great week.

-Brooks

PS. If you've enjoyed the Pulse, would you mind sharing a sentence for us to use on our website?