Now that you’ve reflected and reviewed your accomplishments for 2014, it’s time to set your goals for this year and plan ahead.

Don’t think of this process as ‘setting New Year’s resolutions” as we all know how successful they are (for the most part) in affecting change.  Use your results for last year as the starting point and thinking ahead to what you need and want to accomplish this year to set realistic, measurable goals.

You should do this for your marketing communications job (What do you need to do to help the company met its forecast? What new markets are you entering? Are there any new products, services or events on the horizon?) Write down your goals, rank them in terms of importance, timeline them out and set up tasks or reminders in your calendar to check in periodically on progress and hold yourself accountable.

This is also an exercise you should do for your career. Take a look at where you are professionally and think ahead to where you want to be by 2016. Does that include a new role and higher salary? An entirely new job?  New skills? Similar to your work-related goals, write down your career advancement goals and make the same effort to stay on track during the year to achieve them.

It is important to periodically take the temperature of where you stand and be flexible enough to make adjustments in your activities to ensure you attain your goals. Making an adjustment to your tactics in June might make the difference between success and failure by December.

Also take the time throughout the year to adjust your plan for major changes in your company, marketplace or overall status. You never know what unknown action might happen that could derail your plan or make your initial plan obsolete.

Looking forward to an outstanding 2015,

RTC