Managing the End of The Year

Leadership Moment: Holiday Time

The holiday season has begun in full force, with Tishri, the month of Jewish observances (Rosh Hashanah, October 7th, Yom Kippur, Sukkot, Shmini Atzeret, and Simchat Torah), drawing to a close (wedged in there was Thanksgiving in Canada). On the heels of Tishri we’ll come into a month of mostly US holidays: Halloween, Election Day, Veterans/Armistice Day, and Thanksgiving. After that, we get Christmas, Hanukkah, and New Year’s.

Industry events are trying to squeeze themselves into this window, with high profile cybersecurity conferences like SecTor just scheduling over Jewish holidays.

At the same time, businesses are often scrambling to close out 2024 on a strong footing, tactically overachieving on KPIs, while also laying the strategic groundwork to kick of 2025 with high velocity. Both of those needs demand more out of our teams, at the same time that they have less time available to us. Managers scrambling to get key status updates from employees taking time off may create more chaos by demanding real-time updates from colleagues, rather than being willing to wait a few days until a holiday is over. Routine meetings that happen “weekly” may effectively become “every other work day,” drastically increasing the overhead on your already-busy staff.

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One Minute Pro Tip: Measure outcomes, not activity

Especially around a holiday party, it’s sometimes easy to check in to make sure people are doing work. This can lead to a downward spiral of productivity: people who are already doing more work than they have time to accomplish have to burn more time doing work to demonstrate that they are doing work.

Start agreeing on outcomes: what will get done, when will it be done, and when will a status be available to make sure it’s on track. If you can focus on making sure you’re tracking the outcomes with the lightest touch possible, you free up your team from doing make-work, to being able to manage their time to deliver impactful results.