I had a great conversation with a coaching client this week about the need for their team to keep building pipeline for next year and not let it stall over the coming months. Until that moment I’d been thinking of it as a challenge of the consulting world, but of course it applies to any business and team with a customer, and particularly those with a longer lead time between the first conversation and the signed work.
The way I described it was a bit like daylight saving. With very little fuss we move the clocks forward and almost immediately we step into a different way of living. When you think about it, that’s a pretty big reframe. It changes when we do most things and how we feel about them, and within a week or two we’ve adjusted and are making the most of the longer evenings. Year end is a similar artificial (and handy) construct. Our tax system and reporting cycles keep us focussed on quarters and financial years. Here in Australia, summer adds another layer, with December and Christmas becoming the end game before everyone heads off on holidays.
And because it’s a construct, we can choose to reframe it. What the Exec leader and I talked about was how to interrupt that structure so teams aren’t limping to the finish line in December and then grinding through a slow start in January and February.
What you can do now
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Make sure everyone in the team is properly rested and takes a break somewhere between now and December, rather than pushing through on fumes until Christmas.
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Extend your focus beyond the quarter and beyond Christmas. Look at what’s coming into scope now and what you have lined up each month through to February, not just through to December, and do this first at an individual level and then as a team.
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Bring your team together in November to build momentum for 2027. That means checking in against the strategy and your ways of working, looking at what’s coming up, what’s working well and what needs attention, and agreeing the way forward from there.
I’m doing exactly the same thing in my own business and now, with several of my existing clients too.