By: Candela Iglesias Chiesa
Happy 2025!
I hope you had a restful holiday break and feel recharged for the new year.
I like to do a reflection exercise at the end of the year to figure out what I learned, and how to apply it to the new year.
Below are my main lessons learned for 2024. What about yours? Leave a comment below! I’d love to read them.
When embarking on something new, it’s better with a guide.
We started a new internal project at Alanda in 2024. Something we have not done before, neither in content nor in structure (more about this in 2025!).
It seemed overwhelming and I was unsure of the right order of steps to take, which led to procrastination and spinning wheels.
Then I met someone who has done several similar projects and now guides others through the process. In a single conversation with her, I advanced more than in the previous six months of trying to untangle things alone.
She guided me away from the complicated path I was taking and focused me on the essential first steps. Not surprisingly, these first steps were mostly about gathering information and doing enough research! (Duh…) And then, getting the core project idea on paper to refine it.
She’ll continue to advise us in 2025 as we make steady progress. She has also put us in touch with people with similar projects, from whom we can learn. And now I’m excited again to get this project off the ground!
If you are embarking on a new path in 2025, are you getting the support and guidance you need? It can shorten the learning curve significantly!
Protect your thinking time through an accountability system.
At the start of every year, I block “thinking” or “strategic” time on my calendar each week. It goes well for a month or two, then new projects come rushing in, and thinking time goes out the window.
While this happened again in 2024, I did manage to protect some thinking time by creating accountability for it. Here’s how:
I have a monthly meeting with two amazing women entrepreneurs (who also happen to be my sisters, how lucky am I?) where we discuss challenges we each have and brainstorm solutions. When that meeting is approaching, I feel the pressure to set aside time to think and strategize so I can use this precious time wisely.
Another thing I noticed is that having concrete tasks or problems I want to focus on during my thinking time makes it more likely that I will use it effectively. So I now keep a list of things to focus on, instead of leaving it wide open (albeit wide open thinking time is also very valuable). While I work on other things, I notice where there are challenges and write them down on my list to explore later.
What has worked for you to protect your thinking time? Please share!
To get to new places, experiment with new approaches.
This is the upside of the famous quote “If you do what you’ve always done you’ll get what you’ve always gotten.” It’s so evident, yet so easy to fall into that pattern.
It makes sense. We work hard to build an organization, a system, a process. And once it’s in place it becomes the path of least resistance.
I built Alanda in 2020, and it took me a while to get it up and running. Today we have a small team, everyone knows what to do and when to do it. We have great partners, projects come in, and we deliver. The system runs smoothly.
But it doesn’t work for this new internal project I want to launch. For one thing, this new baby requires a lot of my time!
Earlier this year I asked myself, “What would it look like if the whole team’s efforts focused on this project?”
That’s of course an ideal state, as there is still the day-to-day work to get done and partner projects to complete, but it has gently guided me in a new direction, experimenting with giving some small tasks to the team to accomplish and redirecting some of our work, our networking, our message.
We closed the year by devising a new strategy for 2025, focused on streamlining processes and systems, freeing more time to work on this new project. We’ve also set Alanda up for success by signing up to work with a new advisor (applying lesson number 1 here!).
I’m very excited for 2025 and what these experiments will bring!
How are you applying what you learned in 2024 to your 2025 planning? I’d love to know. You can reply directly to this email.
Cheering you on to accomplish all your projects in 2025!
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