Small Biz. Branding. Inspiration… All of the invigoration can sometimes get… exhausting. As a small agency with big goals in the branding and digital industry, it’s almost inevitable that we’ll need to take a breather and redefine. We re-assess our goals, and stay focused, inspired, and excited all year round. But this year, we want to make even more revolutionary accomplishments. So we are embracing a new strategy. And personally, I love it – so I wanted to share!

In a whirlwind, how do you make sure that you get everything done, and constantly set bigger goals for yourself? That’s just it – set goals. At Sparxoo, we are inspired to keep going by our endless to-do list, and we’ve all got to stay organized, driven, inspired, and sane. As a small business, each team member wears many different hats. This works well for us because of the open and friendly nature of the Sparxoo team, and our diverse functionality, total immersion gives us a productive exchange of ideas. Since we do have a certain team culture, we’re taking the time to define how we embrace the potential of our team by aiming for achieving bigger goals amongst the day-to-day branding efforts. Our strategy: Focus on Two.

The foundation of this strategy is to divide and conquer attainable increments of the ultimate goals. How? We discussed and defined our top two team goals that we are going to accomplish over the months of January and February. Then, we decided upon two goals for each member of the team for the same two-month time period (Showtime, ladies and gentlemen, is February 28). It’s the responsibility of each team member to see that each of their goals is accomplished. Some of the goals are mainly the responsibility of the team member, and others are goals in which the team member is to take the leading role to orchestrate the team’s fulfillment. For example, one of our team-member-specific goals is to take charge of design workstreams, while another is to lead more Sparxoo traffic by taking the initiative to coordinate team attendance at events. If both of the team goals are met, we can tap into our incentive pot, and enjoy something fun as a team. So long as both of the team goals are met, each additional pair of individual goals that are met will add to the team pot (as well as award the team member with a little bonus, of course)! Regardless of incentive, the goals are ones that we are all passionate about, seeing as they emerged from our reflection upon our personal and team goals for improvement. To add to that drive, the two-month time frame is just enough to let us plan and provide top quality, but also keep us innovative and productive.

The trick to our work is inspired productivity: working hard without letting the flow of inspiration slow down. The nature of most work is a composition of overlapping time frames and priorities, each with their own increments and planning necessities: there are always the very short-term tasks (i.e. today/this week), short-term projects (within the next few weeks to a month), medium-term projects (within a few months) and long-term projects (six months from now, this year, within the next three years). All of these periods overlap, and call for a certain capacity of being “broken-down.” And to make sure that everything is accomplished in a healthy, valuable way, we set checkpoints. To that end, the Sparxoo team thought about our long-term goals, and devised our “Focus on Two” achievable goals that will keep us focused and driven amongst the many other projects. This will be our protocol every two months, maintained by weekly check-ins at which the team collaborates and decides upon the next steps (meanwhile, we are all working on inter-weekly timelines in order to report progress amongst our other tasks). In fact, we even shared our personal goals and decided upon our “word-for-the-year” to make sure that everything we do is in line with whom we want to be. And the sentiments that will fuel your 2013 Sparxoo team are…. Drum roll pleeeaasssee: Focused, Sharp, Be better, Inspired, and Powerful.

There’s so much more that goes into how we work, but setting time-lined goals, collaborating, and embracing the power of planning is the foundation to keeping the fire burning. How do you and your team stay focused and innovative? We’d love to know!