Year-End Reflection Isn't Optional

As the year winds down, I always carve out time to analyze how things went. Not just the numbers, those are easy to track. I mean the stuff that doesn't show up in reports: how the team is feeling, what's working, what's broken, what needs to change.

Last Year: My First Real Attempt

At the end of 2024, I scheduled 1-on-1s with team members specifically to ask: What's working? What's not? What needs to change?

Those conversations led to real changes. A few examples:

We started routing tasks to specific teams through HelpScout instead of having one person for the entire company evenly distributing them across individuals. Each team now has a lead who distributes work within their group. It's still round-robin, but at the team level, and that makes all the difference. That person knows who's swamped, who has capacity, and which tasks are more complex than they look on the surface. A team lead managing five people makes smarter decisions than one person trying to manage fifteen.
We restructured our call queues by department. Before, certain staff members were getting burned out answering most of the calls. Now all client-facing team members go into our main phone line round-robin rotation, answer the call, identify what the caller needs, and either help or transfer to the right team. Simple math made this click: 60 daily calls divided by 10 people who answer the phone = 6 inbound calls per person. Suddenly the phones felt manageable instead of overwhelming.

None of these ideas came from me sitting in my office thinking strategically. They came from listening, then thinking strategically.

This Year: Taking It Further

One of my team members started gathering feedback from her teammates on her own, unprompted. She organized it and brought it to me with specific issues and suggestions.

I liked it so much, I asked her to do the same thing with every team. She met with each group separately, without leadership in the room, and then created a report with actionable items.

We've done it twice this year. Both times, we found things that never would've surfaced in a team meeting or anonymous survey.

The Hard Part

Creating a feedback loop sounds simple. It's not.

You will hear things you don't want to hear. You'll hear things you disagree with. You'll hear criticism of decisions you thought were right.

But if you actually care about getting better, as a leader and as an organization, this is the work. Reflection without honest input is just journaling.

The Ask

If you're an agency owner, take this time to do more than review your P&L. Talk to your people. Ask what's working and what isn't. Create a safe space for them to tell you the truth.

You don't have to have all the answers. You just have to be willing to listen.