April showers bring…a crisis of confidence? Dealing with the realization that Q1 is already behind you

It’s April – finally. Snow is melting. Flowers are blooming. And the world seems to be emerging from what was, in many parts of the country, a truly brutal winter. Another phenomenon sweeping offices across America this week: the HOLY $#@& “we’re already a quarter into the year” moment.

You know what I’m talking about. You hear yourself (or your boss, or your team leader) say something like:

“Crap. It’s the start of Q2 and I’m already behind track on my KPIs.”

“Damn. We haven’t moved the needle at all on revenue yet this year.”

“WTF. We still haven’t hired the people we need to do what we promised to deliver this year.”

There are reasons for this slow start, of course. As the previous year end-close out details come together, budgets that were supposed to be locked in by November are squishy until late January (or even February). The end-of-the-year holiday PTO blitz (followed by the February and March vacations to ski slopes and beaches) means the decision cadences take a while to get back on track. Open job requisitions stay in “pending” status until the engines get warm again.

While they aren’t good excuses, for better or worse, they are the reality for many organizations. I’ve seen this happen in for-profit and non-profit settings, large and small companies. And the sudden panic inevitably leads to an overheating of those idled engines in April and May to try to make up for lost time. So, what’s to be done about it?

Take a deep breath

Now is not the time to be reactionary and throw everything but the kitchen sink at your objectives for the year. Regroup with your team and stakeholders and affirm your priorities against your goals and planned deliverables. Figure out what levers could be pulled to strike at multiple objectives concurrently and get you the biggest bang for your buck.

For example, is there an open role on your team that, once filled, could help you improve your velocity and provide a needed boost to innovation and refreshed outside-in thinking? Then stop playing around with internal candidates and decide to bring someone new into the team. Call a recruiter to help you find a contract-to-hire candidate. The market is white hot right now for product talent, but it’s a highly volatile one, and great people are out there looking for the next place to land. Find the shortest path to a start date and get someone working to close the gap.

Be honest with yourself

If you’ve got KPIs hanging out there that turn your stomach every time you look at them, it’s time to get brutally honest about what needs to be done. I’m willing to bet you know what the root of the issue is –you don’t need another quarter of data to tell you that you’ve got a flaw in your enrollment process or a leak in your funnel.

Pull a SWAT team of your best thinkers together – those that are closest to the problem as well as your most blue-sky innovators from other teams– and lock yourselves in a room for a day or two and do some old-fashioned design thinking to understand the problem and start to prototype solutions, define a timetable for testing & validation, and identify those accountable for implementation.

You’ll walk out of the session with a ready-to-go action plan. And you’ll also have taught your team that problems or failures can be met head-on — and that you are a culture that works together to solve them. (Hello, improved engagement scores.) Just don’t forget to execute the plan you develop.

Get off the fence

When I was a kid, my family escaped the city for a week at the lake every summer. I would get an allowance for candy, video games, and shopping in the resort towns nearby. Every summer, I’d hem and haw the first few days about how I was spending that allowance, holding on to it until later in the week in case I found something expensive that I wanted. And every summer, because that magical purchase never materialized, I’d end up on the last day of the week blowing it on candy necklaces and regretting the more moderate treats I’dpassed up earlier in the vacation. (What can I say – I didn’t learn effective budgeting until much later in life.)

I see the same thing happen in organizations. Leaders sit on budgets in Q1 because they aren’t sure if their plans are quite right and they don’t want to waste their money. Predictably, by Q4, they’re looking for anything and everything to blow the money on so that they don’t lose it in the following year’s cycle. Or worse, before the year is up and because they are underspent against plan, a budget constriction or reallocation means they lost the budget they we’re sitting on anyways.

Take a look at your planned budget expenditure next to your goals and KPIs. Are the priorities in alignment? Are you spending where your biggest opportunities and gains likely are? If not – get them aligned, and then trust yourself and your team to run with the plan. Buy the software, talent, or consulting help you need to hit the numbers you’ve promised. Give those resources as much runway as possible to make good on the investment this year. Where there’s a surplus, meter out the additional budget through small-scale experimentation. It’s a better use of resources than blowing it (or losing it) later in the year.

Look ahead

Right now is a great time to figure out how to avoid this entire cycle next year. Work with leadership now to see if budget planning and decision cycles can get moved up by 4–6 weeks so things are truly locked-in by the end of Q4. So that you don’t set yourself up for delays, work with your team to stagger PTO at the year's end and into Q1. Identify the rough patches in the annual planning process while they are fresh in your memory and work with the executive team to get them fixed now, not in August or September when it’s already too late.

Good luck! And don’t let me catch you back here in July, when the year is half over.