Happy New Year!  Each year as an executive team at Footers, we select a theme for the year to come.  This serves as the overarching guide for where we want our focus to be and a mantra for our team to rally around.  At our strategic planning retreat in November, we all agreed that this year needed to be about quality and protecting the reputation we have earned as a company.  After achieving our goals of more stability and balance in 2023, we sensed the need to make sure we didn’t get complacent as a team.  We wanted 2024 to be about attacking areas of mediocrity and refining the things we are doing well.  With that in mind, our theme for 2024 is: Never Settle.

When you reach certain levels of success, it can be difficult to maintain.  There are countless stories of companies that rise to the top, only to crumble in the years to come.  Often when we personally reach a target goal, related to fitness or health, we revert back to our original state months later.  And in sports, teams that win a championship have an even harder time defending it and winning it again the following year.  The danger of perspective is that we look back at how far we’ve come and give ourselves a pass when things get tough.  It’s easy to say, “Well what we are doing now is way better than what we were doing a few years ago.”  This may be true, but it doesn’t consider where you want to be moving forward.  It takes tremendous discipline to make it better every day (MIBE) and not settle for mediocre or just okay.

Never Settle for us at Footers is not about how we stack up against our competition, it’s about being the best we can be.  It’s not about winning at all costs, it’s about staying true to our mission and values.  It’s not about pushing past our breaking point, it’s about working together as a team to maintain high standards AND healthy levels of balance.  Never Settle is the expectation that we are going to set high standards and do everything we can to maintain them. 

There is always a give and take in life.  Many times, we decide to focus on one area, and it causes another area to suffer.  This is usually a result of too many priorities and a team or individual who is spread too thin.  While we may not be able to be awesome at everything, it doesn’t however mean that we must accept “just ok” or average results in one place to achieve success in another.  We must get clear on what really matters and find a harmonious balance of those things. There is a delicate art to working with the pieces of that puzzle and solving it is what defines our individual journeys as leaders.  As you kick off 2024, I challenge you to think about the areas in your life where you are settling. 

Are you giving it your all in the areas that matter? And what are you currently tolerating that won’t serve you this year?