Probably everyone has some kind of a plan/idea for themselves. Most of us find it rather easy to answer the question so frequently asked at job interviews: where do you see yourself in 5–10 years? But we have detailed plans for the nearest year far less often. We work in the autopilot mode, performing the same tasks in a repetitive way and we don’t really see where we’re going. Meanwhile, these are the small steps and the nearest plans that can lead us to bigger changes that will affect our whole career. For this reason it is so important to reflect upon what we are going to do this year to develop our career potential. Our customers know this perfectly well, and so they had no difficulty answering my question. 

Effective ideas exchanging

For Henkel’s Anna Kobierska, the main goal for 2020 is dialogue: “My goal for this year is dialogue. I would like to participate more often in partnership-based, fair and open conversations that are intended to exchange thoughts and ideas. Which is why my professional efforts this year will be focused on developing effective dialoging tools,” she says.

Stories hidden in podcasts

For people dealing with communication, and after all our customers are experts in the field, it is always an important goal to recognise current market trends and to learn new solutions. Communication is a field which changes very dynamically. New methods and tools come up. Even experienced communication experts need to face these changes on an ongoing basis. Our customer Anna Waśniowska of ING is very familiar with it: “Setting goals is part of our corporate culture at ING. The way we work – the use of agile methods – encourages to taking up new challenges. My domain, which is internal communication, is also not free from such influences. Which is why in the upcoming year I personally plan to develop my research and designing skills within Service Design based on PACE, which is ING’s original method of working with innovation, combining Lean and Design Thinking. In practice this means continuing interviewing and designing solutions based on personas and the needs of current ING employees. It is also a review of the efficiency of the current communication tools and channels, and attempts to introduce completely new forms, such as podcasts. Will podcasts take root? Our experience so far shows that it’s very probable. Before I started working at a bank I was a radio reporter for many years, so it is like going back to my roots – telling stories through sound and reaching to even deeper layers of imagination. It’s going to be an interesting year ☺   

Winning employees’ hearts

In the beginning of a new year some make very specific plans with regard to their most important professional tasks. This was what Kacper Chudzikiewicz of Alior Bank did: “The greatest challenge for internal communication next year is going to be how to efficiently get through to employees with information about the bank’s new strategy. We will be announcing it in January and for me as a person dealing with internal communication it is a challenge not only to reach employees with the information, but also to make them come around to it; to win their hearts with this new strategy. This is the major goal for the next year and the greatest challenge,” he says.