What’s New

As we entered CY24, many of us made some New Year resolutions. As the leader of the HARMAN Luxury Audio Group, I too have made some resolutions for our business unit.

Before I share my personal and business resolutions for the New Year, I thought I would provide you with some insights as to why only a small percentage of people achieve their resolutions and most give up on them in February. Experts who have researched why less than 10% of people achieve their resolutions, and what they discovered is interesting.

One of the experts that I have followed on social channels is Dr. Michelle Rozen. Often referred to as the Change Doctor, Dr. Rozen collaborates with companies that want to empower their employees to make better goals and better decisions. One of the books that I recently read by her was titled 2 Second Decisions. In this short but interesting read, Dr. Rozen shares that most people make over 30,000 decisions daily in their lives, in which most are made by your brain working on autopilot. She writes that we need to train our brains to make similar quick decisions (in two seconds or less) in our work and private lives. Whether you are looking to build a winning team, a company that wants to grow your revenue in CY24, or an individual looking to achieve your New Year’s Resolutions, we all need a plan and some simple tools to help us achieve.

One important piece of advice I have received from others who often achieve their resolutions and goals for the year is to not focus on more than a couple of goals. Ideally, we should choose one major goal or resolution and make sure it is measurable, attainable and tracked daily.

The last time I wrote about resolutions was in January of 2020, and I shared my resolution to lose 25 pounds that year. I shared my goals with others to have them help me stay to the course. What I had not planned on was the COVID-19 pandemic and the stress eating in which I would be doing while watching the local and world news reports.

I eventually lost those 25 pounds, but I did it by setting smaller weight goals to attain over a longer period. I had to change more than my eating habits to succeed. I chose to subscribe to the Noom App, which tracks my daily input of food and exercise. It took about 30 days before I was able to create the healthy habits required to hit my goals and only one day to have a setback if I did not follow my daily routine of weighing myself and reading the inspirational advice to keep me going.

Dr. Rozen has a new book scheduled to be released later this spring call the 6% Club. I have already pre-ordered a copy of that book which will dive deeper into why 94% of people drop their pledge or resolutions only two months into the year.

At HARMAN, we just kicked off the CY24 Target Setting process. Each of us will set S.M.A.R.T. (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Time Based) goals that we need to accomplish to hit our business unit objectives. We will be asked to set both personal and business targets for the year. This year I will encourage my team to have goals that need to be attained before the end of the fiscal and calendar year. This will keep them focused on hitting short and long-term goals. If we were all focused on attaining at least one percent of our yearly goal daily, we will find it much easier to attain our goals by year’s end.

So, what are my personal and business resolutions for CY24? My personal resolution will be to schedule and spend time with my friends and family who have helped me become the person that I am. To help me achieve this goal, I have written down those individuals whom I want to spend more time with and have started blocking out my PTO in WorkDay, our company’s Human Resources software system.

I have made this goal Specific by writing down the names, Measurable, because it is being tracked in WorkDay, Attainable by not putting too many names on my list, Relevant because it will improve my mental health, and Time based because I will be spending meaningful time with someone on my list each quarter of the year.

For my business resolution, my goal will be tied to a recent employee engagement survey we just went through as a company and a team. We were all asked to respond to statements regarding our work environment and culture. Whilst the results were incredibly positive, there were some statements that my team responded to that I believe I could improve upon. I have committed to meet more often with the entire team this year to talk about how we are doing against our business goals and to help my team better understand all the relevant resources that are available to them.

Transparent Two-Way Communication is crucial for a company or a business unit to attain everything that is possible. I have made it a target to conduct quarterly Town-Hall meetings with my entire team in CY24. The first one will be scheduled once we get back from ISE in Barcelona in February.

What are your goals or resolutions for the year? If you need someone to keep you on task in achieving them, drop me a note at david.tovissi@harman.com so I can help you meet them.