As we near the end of the year, what are your feelings on 2016? - SmartBrief

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As we near the end of the year, what are your feelings on 2016?

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Leadership

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As we near the end of the year, what are your feelings on 2016? SmartPulse -- our weekly nonscientific reader poll in SmartBrief on Leadership -- tracks feedback from more than 210,000 business leaders.

SmartPulse — our weekly nonscientific reader poll in SmartBrief on Leadership — tracks feedback from more than 210,000 business leaders. We run the poll question each week in our e-newsletter.

As we near the end of the year, what are your feelings on 2016?

  • It was a fantastic year!: 24%
  • It was just another year: 31%
  • I’m not sure how it’ll turn out — it’s a nail-biter: 16%
  • I can’t wait for it to be over: 29

On balance, 2016 has been okay. What’s alarming is almost a third of respondents found it to be a dreadful year. Whether it was business performance or personal turmoil, many of you faced big challenges. The question for leaders is what are you doing now to prepare your organization for a better 2017? Are you beginning your planning process early? Securing more resources? Hiring to fill gaps that hampered performance? Having the tough performance conversations that haven’t been addressed yet? While many performance factors are outside your control, that’s not an excuse for doing nothing. Take some time to reflect on what will make 2017 better and start planning for those changes now. Otherwise, you’ll be answering this poll question the same way next year.

Mike Figliuolo is managing director of thoughtLEADERS and the host of the upcoming Executive Insight 16 — a leadership conference being held in New York this November.