There are two kinds of “improvement” you can aim for in your work.

One kind entails sharpening the tools you use every day; streamlining processes; nudging your margins a bit; tightening belts and selling a little harder. At the end of the year, you’ve grown your top line a little and presumably your bottom line as well. This is improvement as practiced by most of the companies we know of, and there is nothing particularly wrong with it. It’s the stuff Wall Street talks about every day — the standard formula.

The other kind of improvement entails really seeing and understanding the behaviors and the motives of your team and your market. You build accountability – not only for yourself, but for each person on your team, and for outcomes. You study market data for insights, not just numbers, and you know exactly what your competition is beating you at. You ask better questions, and you learn more about your core customer – not just your biggest and loudest ones, but also those who may not even know you. You write a clearer, more concise, more compelling story about what you do and why it matters; and then you tell it. Your customer relationships strengthen, and they talk about you because you “get” them.

Two kinds of improvement — each comprising different types of work and creating different cultures.

Which have you been doing? And which do you want for the new year?

If you are not sure, let’s talk it out.