Recharging for the second half

A mid-year review is both a strategic and restorative act — not just a performance check-in, but a recalibration for sustainable success. It starts by giving yourself permission to carve out some quiet thinking time for yourself, and space to work out how you can approach the next 5-6 months.

Business is tough and the Client Service Director role is energy sapping – these two facts are undisputable.

It is a role that requires the constant management of both sides of a coin, whether it is between client and agency, or agency leaders and team, or hand-offs between team and creatives or strategists. And then there is the duality of delivering results whilst preserving energy for personal life, especially family.

Whilst client servicing generally attracts people who are natural organisers and are action-oriented, even the most energised and enthusiastic of people can become drained by the constant calls on their time, energy and patience.

A framework to help you plan for success

If you have a goal, or set of goals, that you really want to achieve, then you need a framework to help you gather your thoughts and organise them into a roadmap that will help you stay focused and deliver the plan.

Below is an end-to-end process for people who want to create a full action plan, but reflection does not mean you have to end up with a full or perfect plan. It can be enough to simply organise your thoughts, acknowledge what you want to change or achieve, and have some guiderails or ideas to start the second half with. Don’t let a lack of time stop you from starting!

Start where you are

Start with the classic ‘what’s gone well/not well’, and feel free to make it a mix of professional and personal. Whilst we may divide our work-self and home-self in half, the fact is, we are one person and what happens in one dimension or our life affects the other.

1. What’s gone well so far this year?
   • Why did it go well?
   • What was your contribution to it that made it successful?
   • What would you replicate or change?
2. What’s not gone well?
   • Why did it not go well?
   • What was your role in it? If faced with a similar situation,
   • What would you replicate or change?
3. Emotionally: How do you generally feel right now?
   • Try creating a “word cloud” of how you feel now vs. how you want to feel by Christmas. Seeing the contrast can be a powerful motivator.
4. Functionally: what practical information and goals have you been given, or created yourself:
   • A company or team annual plan?
   • Your PDP and/or career objectives?
   • Review your job description to remind yourself what you are personally tasked to deliver?
   • Your personal goals ie. moving house etc?
   • What business strategies have you or company tried to tackle so far?
   • What are some key problems that need solving for H2?

What are your next priorities?

From the above, list out what you’d like to have achieved by Christmas.

Note, some of the goals may have an end deliverable for next year, but is there a milestone you’d like to have achieved by Christmas?

The goal of this step is to end up with an achievable set of priorities that you can do by Christmas. Don’t overwhelm yourself. Depending on the size and scale of them, I generally would set myself around 2-5, and one of those is usually a personal goal.

It is important therefore to invest the time now to look at the above list of functional goals you are tasked to achieve:

• what goals, objectives, KPI’s or milestones do you need to deliver?
• how would you prioritise these?
• what is your role or remit in these? Note, it may well vary.
• who else are you dependent on to make those goals happen?
• Are these priorities you have been told, or that you believe are the priority?

This last question is raised because it’s important to ensure you are fully aligned with the business about the goal, its purpose and imperative. You need to have a shared understanding of what it means, what success look like, how it’s being measured and that it is indeed a priority. believe in the priority and goal.

What will make it successful?

• Are the goals or milestones achievable?
  • if not, why not? What needs to change to make it achievable? What are the roadblocks? Who can help?
• Do they play to your strengths, or do you need a mentor, or access to certain information, a regular review or access to training?
• Do you know how success will be measured and will you have access to tracking data so you know where you are at? Do you need a sign-off framework to ensure decisions made along the way are approved? That assumptions aren’t being made?
• What will get in the way of success? For example, are there other people involved who are tricky or challenging, or just difficult to get hold of?
• Do you need any Plan B’s? What if you can’t get information you need, or get hold of the colleague/stakeholder you need to involve?
• What if a MASSIVE project comes in and side-swipes you totally? What’s the impact of not delivering that priority?

Do a SWOT

Taking all of your thinking to date, do a SWOT on it. This is a great way to really organise your thoughts and begin to shape out some actions.

A SWOT reveals any strengths, weaknesses, opportunities or threats that you hadn’t thought of when freewheeling your thoughts, so make sure you follow each item through eg

• with each strength or opportunity, ask why it is, what it means to you, how can you leverage it, when should you leverage it, who do you need?
• Likewise with each threat or weakness, examine it for what it could mean to you, how you can mitigate it or avoid it?

Create your roadmap of actions and milestones

Select one of the priorities, and create a roadmap of how you are going to deliver your goal by doing the following:

1. On the left, state the singular objective
2. On the far right, state the outcome
3. Mark out key milestones – those being a mixture of key presentations to senior stakeholders to keep them on track; decisions / stage-gates or sign-offs that need to be made; any data check-in moments; any milestones you personally want to set to ensure you are on track
4. Identify the key actions you need to do in order to ensure the next action can be started and/or delivered. Some people write actions in reverse order ie. to achieve this, I need to have x and y. Do what works best for you.
5. Repeat this for each of your identified priorities.
6. Review your roadmaps up together and see where there are potential overloads and collisions, or harmonies you could exploit.
7. Shuffle the plans around until you have something that looks realistic.
8. If this exercise reveals that you won’t have time to do all of those priorities plus the day job, then ask yourself if you can change the end goal:
   1. Maybe you need to put that priority on a longer timeline, and be more realistic about what you can achieve in H2
   2. Maybe you need to manage some expectations
   3. Maybe you can get additional support or help to reduce the pressure on your time, and share out the actions.

Before you dive into execution, take a moment to ask: Does this plan energise me? If not, what would make it feel more aligned?

What are your next steps to get started

Finally, bring it back to the present. What can you do over the next week to ensure your first action is completed?

To form good habits and maintain a steady flow of action, mark out 30 mins in your diary each week to review actions for the week, then block the time you need and book in the meetings you need to have.

In conclusion

This is a robust approach to creating a plan. If you find you’ve stalled halfway through the planning, then reduce the robustness of it. Identify a handful of milestones and people, and what you can do immediately. As said above, don’t let lack of time stop you from starting.

If you want to do a deeper review to plan out your next year or few years, consider the Career & Goal Planner for Client Service careers – or a Business Plan planner for Founders, and Strategic Goal planner for everyone else. These are all available at Amazon

If you’d like a sneak peek at any of these Planners, I offer a free 30-minute walkthrough. No pressure, just insight. Contact me on hello@joannaanthony.com for a call.