Three questions to ask now that could make or break your year
January always starts with big plans and excitement. Everyone’s fired up, aligned, and ready to win.
But suddenly, it’s March, and that energy may have shifted. Teams lose focus. Priorities drift. And what felt so clear at the beginning of the year starts to look cluttered and chaotic.
This is the messy middle. And it’s a make-or-break time for your goals this year.
As you look ahead to your Q2 priorities and plans, now is the time to take a step back and evaluate where you are now. So I’ve got three questions that will help you make the right course corrections now and compound the progress you’ve made so far.
Question #1: What did we learn in Q1 that should change our approach going forward?
“We weren’t trying to build a company. We’re trying to build a learning machine.”
I love this line from my conversation with Walter Driver, co-CEO of the hugely successful mobile app developer Scopely.
As he explained to me, his team believed that if they could learn just 3% faster than any other company in their industry, that knowledge would compound over time—and they’d come out ahead.
That mindset of constant learning is what separates agile, dynamic companies from ones that just execute the same plan over and over, regardless of how well it’s working.
Whatever you’ve been working on so far this year, there are insights to be gleaned—about your customers, your market, your team, your strategy, or your industry as a whole.
It’s up to you as a leader to mine for those lessons with your team so you can use them to adjust your strategy for the rest of the year.
This “learning machine” mentality will help you pivot from what’s not working. But perhaps more importantly, you’ll see what is working, so you can start developing strategies to double down on it and compound growth.
Try this: Before you finalize any plans for Q2, schedule a 60-90 minute Q1 debrief with your leadership team. Ask: What assumptions were wrong? What worked better than expected? What surprised us? Use those insights to adjust your approach for the next quarter.
Question #2: Are we still focused on what matters most, or have we drifted?
As we go through the year, we inevitably find new opportunities, unexpected challenges, and urgent requests that weren’t on anyone’s radar in January.
And before you know it, your team is doing ten things instead of the three you agreed mattered most.
That drift is one of the biggest threats to your momentum in Q2.
Yamini Rangan, CEO of HubSpot, has a principle she uses to fight this. She says that “fortune favors the focused.” As she told me, great companies scale by not pursuing good ideas so they can execute great ones.
She’s right. You have to be able to say no—even to things that sound compelling—if they pull you away from the priorities that will actually move the needle.
So here’s the hard question: Are you still doing the things you said mattered in January? Or have shiny new objects distracted you from what you agreed was most important?
Try this: Pull out your top 3-5 priorities from your annual or Q1 planning session. Review them with your team. Then ruthlessly cut or defer anything that’s pulling focus away from those priorities.
Question #3: Do we have the right resources and support to win in Q2?
Here’s the reality: 24% of employees say they’re experiencing burnout because they don’t have enough resources or the right tools to do their job properly.
That’s nearly a quarter of your workforce potentially struggling—not because they lack talent or motivation, but because they lack what they need to succeed.
Now is the time to identify and fix those gaps.
Maybe your team is missing a key skill or tool. Maybe there’s a budget constraint you didn’t anticipate. Or maybe there’s a blocker that’s slowing everything down—something procedural, bureaucratic, or technological.
Whatever it is, if you wait until mid-Q2 to address it, you’ll put your team in reactive mode just when you need them to be their most effective.
Shantanu Narayen, CEO of Adobe, put it plainly in his episode of How Leaders Lead: “Our job as leaders is removing obstacles.”
That means not just setting big goals and making plans, but also proactively tackling the obstacles that prevent your team from accomplishing them.
Try this: Ask your team: “What do you need that you don’t have?” Then prioritize closing those gaps fast. Whether it’s additional headcount, better tools or training, or busting down a bureaucratic roadblock, don’t wait. Address it now, before it derails your Q2 progress.
Final thoughts
Most leaders wait until they’re in the middle of Q2 to realize they’ve lost focus, drifted from their priorities, or let critical gaps go unaddressed. By then, it’s harder to recover.
But you don’t have to be like most leaders.
If you take the time right now to ask these three questions:
- What did we learn?
- Are we still focused on the right things?
- Do we have what we need?
Then you’ll set your team up to sustain momentum and deliver results.
So which of these questions will you ask your team this week? What else do you do between quarters to keep your team sharp and aligned? Drop your thoughts in the comments or tag a leader who’s great at keeping teams focused through the messy middle.