Stop, Start, Continue: Your blueprint for success this year

In our monthly blog ‘Deconstructing Change‘ our internal change experts, Rachael Hays and Gayle Lui, look at all things change and transformation. In this edition Gayle explores the power of reflection and goal-setting at the start of a new year, introducing the Stop, Start, Continue framework as a practical tool to drive meaningful and lasting change in 2025.
The start of a New Year is a natural time to reflect, regroup, replan and repurpose. Every year people and businesses alike make promises to change, ranging from minute to monumental. Some of these can be the seeds of wonderful transformations, both professionally and personally. But often with time and unforeseen influences, they get diverted, reprioritised or fizzled away to become next year’s resolution. So how can we hold ourselves and each other to account to make the changes and make them stick?
Stop, Start, Continue is a simple exercise which can be used to help put some structure and meaning around this idea. When this is then enhanced with timeframes, ownership and tracking, you have a solid foundation to build a plan from.
The idea is to think about what’s not working, what could work better and what’s already working that you want to carry on working. This could be identifying activities, behaviours, processes, maybe even phrases. Then sorting them into the 3 groups. The key thing is whoever you’re doing it with needs to feel able to be truthful without fear of judgement, and to feel free to discuss and debate ideas presented by others. It may be that using something like an anonymous online form can help get everyone’s ideas out, or even good old-fashioned Post-its on a wall.
In my experience, groups are excellent at identifying both the stuff they don’t like and the stuff they really do like – it’s what falls in the middle that can take a bit of encouragement. Having someone impartial, perhaps from another team or an external facilitator can help to tease these things out. Also try to think about how something you want to stop could be instead something you start, for example, you may get “Stop having so many meetings”. This could be turned into “Start having agreed focus / no meeting times”. Or “Stop sending so many project communications” could be “Start using a consolidated weekly newsletter for non-urgent project communications”.
Getting the group to talk about challenges is helpful and healthy but avoid casting blame or allowing excessive negativity. The key is to acknowledge it, document it, move on. This process can go on for a little while until you have a board full of things to stop, start or continue.
At this point you may start to notice key themes – is it communications? Workloads? Interactions with another part of the business? A particular pinch point in a process? This can highlight where you need to focus.
Once you have this information, write it up and structure your approach. When do you want that thing to have changed? Who is best placed in the group to spearhead it? How often should you check in as a group to see whether you’re on track? Make sure you are checking in on the things you want to continue doing – oftentimes this group can be forgotten with all the starting and stopping!
Finally, plan a retrospective. Celebrate the successes and discuss what hasn’t worked as expected. Maybe these things are no longer important as they have been mitigated. Or maybe more focus and commitment is needed to get the change the imbedded.
At Definia, we can support you with such an exercise as a good first step toward a more in-depth health check. Getting stakeholders talking and thinking about the status quo can unlock a wealth of improvement ideas and help you to form your own Start, Stop, Continue list for success in 2025.