Let me introduce you to your new favourite word for 2024

Catabolism

What on earth does this word mean I hear you ask?

At this time of year, I can often hear clients reflecting on their achievements from the previous year. And this is a good start in my books. But if we just put the weight of our time looking back at this point of the year, it is not the whole picture. As the year moves from the old (goodbye 2023) to the new (hello and happy 2024!), it might be relatively easy to pick out and celebrate specific “wins” from the year that passed. However, it’s not often at the start of the New Year that we give ourselves a chance to comprehensively and strategically plan our direction of travel for the year ahead - OR make this plan a relentless focus as the year unfolds.

As we move into the increasing pace of the New Year we can fall into the trap of reactivity over strategy, we start falling into the waterfall of “busy”. Our pockets start filling with more water. Before we know it we’re involved in activity that moves us away from our intended meaning, and we forget to notice our “new priorities” aren’t leading us to where we really want to go. You could say our aim is a little off from our good intentions. With our problem-solving minds we need to work hard to resist the pull and load of the water. And to help us, we need catabolism.  

In the Positive Leadership context, we have identified that the leaders who bring the best out of themselves and others draw on their meaning, purpose, and catabolism throughout the year. Meaning refers to what gives our lives and organisation value - our narrative; purpose reflects the overarching ways we can achieve meaning - putting the narrative into a plot; and catabolism - the term we coined through our research - is the deliberate action we take to break down purpose into our regular activity. As leaders we don’t just need a clear vision, values, and a plan - we need to help ourselves and those around us stay focused on that plan to ensure we give it the best chance of success.  

And that’s why I encourage you to make catabolism your new favourite word in 2024. This time next year in 2025, l would love all leaders (myself and my team included) to be celebrating a year spent fully in service of our greater meaning - it’s what I call Grand Design in my book on Positive Leadership.

How to catabolise your meaning:

First of all, what is your vision and meaning for what you are working towards (at a personal and professional level what is the narrative you have); how does this meaning then translate into your purpose - what you “do”, and the main goals you have?

Secondly, spend some time breaking this purpose into your goals and priorities, and reflecting on how your regular daily/ weekly/ monthly tasks contribute to your purpose. Consider reorganising your daily/ weekly/ monthly schedules if necessary.

Finally, reflect on how you can role model this approach for the teams that you work with, and ask the question: with all of the activity we are engaged in, are we focusing on the right priorities to achieve our annual goals and longer-term vision here?

I appreciate that there are some big questions to answer within this process and it’s far from easy (hence why we can often come a cropper on this), so please feel free to reach out if you’d like to discuss further.

Here’s to a successful and meaning-FULL focused year ahead.