Five Adobe Leaders Share Rituals for a Successful New Year

Year of the Mouse image designed by Ki-Young Choi, Managing Director, Adobe Korea.

As we head into the new decade and celebrate the Lunar New Year, now is the perfect time to reflect on how your business has performed over the past twelve months and set a vision for the year to come. From planning to painting, journaling to prioritizing, we’re taking a look at the rituals employed by Adobe leaders from across Asia Pacific to drive their teams to success.

Ki-Young Choi, Managing Director, Adobe Korea

With the beginning of 2020, I want to be more creative in both business and personal sides.

During the year-end and New Year holidays, I’ve had a habit of drawing or painting something that can reflect my New Year’s resolution or celebration of fresh new start.

For example, I’ve drawn Chinese zodiac animals on iPad before while thinking about the priority to be set for New Year. This year, with the new Fresco tool, I can be more creative for my New Year rituals.

On the business side, as our team should be more productive in 2020 to be successful, I need more creative ideas and approaches to get more done with given resources.

Suzanne Steele, Managing Director, Adobe Australia and New Zealand

I have been keeping a diary for many years, recording both personal and professional wins, challenges and general thoughts I’d like to either revisit or simply document. At the end of every year, I read the entries from the past year, and spend a lot of time reflecting on the good things, the tough times and things I would do differently.

Reading and reflecting upon these diary entries helps to develop an early framework for the organizational plan. Once I collaborate with my team to develop the final plan, it allows us enough time to create excitement and re-energize to get the job done in the New Year.

Simon Dale, Managing Director, Adobe South East Asia

I subscribe to the mantra “Fail to Plan, Plan to Fail,” along with involving the team in the planning to ensure they understand it, commit to it, and are ready to execute without delay once the year starts.

Yew Hwee Ng, Senior Managing Director, Adobe Greater China

I like to start the new year by communicating with the team to sharpen our focus on this year’s priorities, and set KPIs that ensure clarity of goals. We then identify and align on both individual and team goals to encourage close collaboration across teams.

To set up for success I feel it’s important to support the team to achieve our goals by preparing internal & external trainings, career development coaches and other systematic support.

And finally, execute, execute, execute! See the plan through with dedication to daily tasks as we work towards our goals.

Janie Lim, APAC Senior Marketing Director, Adobe Digital Media

I trust in the collective power of a highly driven and collaborative team to achieve impactful results in today’s complex and dynamic business environment. The start of a year is always exciting as we prepare to take on new ambitious goals and challenges against the business strategy and plan. I ask my leadership team to envision how success looks like at the end of 2020 and write a win statement to capture the accomplishment. The win statements are then shared across functions to ensure alignment toward common objectives.

What are your New Year rituals that you use to kick off the year with a bang and inspire your organization to exceed your 2020 goals?

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