Welcome to 2024. I wonder if we can label 2024 as the What is Old is New Year.
What do I mean by that? Let’s first look at what society has to say about this year. Depending on your beliefs, it is the Year of the Wood Dragon, an eight-year, or a Leap Year. Well, if not Julius Ceasar himself, most calendars will tell us the latter is true, at least for those who follow the Gregorian calendar.
There are some comforting messages in the various forecasts for the year if you want to find them. It should be a year of reflection and introduction, a calmer year that will bring prosperity to those who stay focused. Prosperity of many forms, to be precise.
The international headlines for 2024 will tell you that AI will continue to dominate business, that inflation curbing will be the focus for governments, and that the US election will have a significant impact on every region’s politics. Travel will still be booming, while luxury goods will be looking to recover.
The post-pandemic era will continue, and businesses and business leaders must address challenges beyond their profit and loss statements. Mental health. Housing. Personal freedoms. War. Terrorism. Civil unrest. The list seems endless because it is.
Perhaps I am naive to suggest this is exclusive to the post-pandemic era and has probably been the norm through every significant historical period. When people talk about how fast things are changing, an appropriate retort could be that things are constantly changing. Fast.
So perhaps we need to look at this year of yours, 2024, which features an extra day and challenges that businesses face as the same challenges that have always faced business. While we may align on what is new and old, we probably agree that our approach to the old cannot be the same. How best to tackle 2024? Is having an extra twenty-four hours going to provide the personal breakthroughs we crave in our lives? I doubt it.
Let me propose an approach worth considering; although, at the risk of painting me old school or not innovative, pushing those risks to the center of the table, it seems 2024 is our year to focus on our strengths. Those strengths are the attributes and approaches that have allowed us to get to where we are today. All too often, we overlook the wins in our career and focus on the losses when, in fact, we’ve had a pretty kick-ass journey to get us where we are today.
In addition to focusing on our strengths, how do we double up on providing our most valuable forms of support, products, mentorship, and content to our audiences, followers, clients and colleagues? This concept is another form of dealing with our strengths, where we rediscover our proven process and sought-after contribution. Naturally, this foundation of leveraging our strengths and delivering our proven value leads to a discussion regarding the audience we serve.
To achieve a disciplined focus for 2024, consider making your priority audience your most loyal audience, specifically those who have supported us for as long as we have helped them. In addition to our current loyalists, where have those long-term cohorts we have been neglectful in our connection with over the past few years been? Laying fault for not being in touch at the feet of the events of 2020 is undoubtedly a disguised excuse at best. There will always be new people to meet and connect with; however, they should be a second priority to your tribe.
The most excellent part about this foundational approach in 2024 is that it will be genuine to you. It will feel that way because it is. As someone with a pet peeve with the word authentic, I will even allow it to be highly original. However, if you follow this direction too literally and assume that it means you should run out and buy a flip phone to put in your combo lock briefcase, then I want to reset your GPS.
What you do and the value it creates for the audiences you have long supported need to be delivered in an entirely new way. Technology, advancement, and innovation give you the tools to lean into your old in a new way. In a way that is entirely more human than you could have imagined because of the humanity embedded in the DNA of your approach.
You should not view AI platforms, bots, metaverses, and blockchains as something from a strange planet. Instead, they are the calculators, digital assistants, joysticks, and databases of the future. None of those latter four concepts should feel remotely intimidating, as AI is rolling through every aspect of your work life. Rejecting AI would be like dismissing having a mobile phone, a computer, or even a fax machine back in the day.
As we value the impact of Machine Learning on our future, we should consider how it can help us deliver on the strengths of our past. AI and many of its applications are a new solution provider to work through data, complexity, and situations that may bog our minds down and distract us from what we should be doing past and leaning into our foundation.
After so many years of being told to pivot, adjust on the fly, and revisit strategy daily, we can inhale and pay attention to our signature approaches. We have new tools that will make it more manageable to keep us on track and remove the distractions that prevented us from doubling down on the essentials. I know this reads like a tale of opposites, and that is intentional as opposites attract to create the force field of power for your year.
By adopting an approach that encourages you to sharpen the tools that have made you the warrior you are, you will soon be celebrating that 2024 becomes a personal leap year.