Every year, somewhere in the second week of December, I notice the same thing across all five of my ventures. Teams are tired, customers are distracted, suppliers are closing for the holidays, and any decision that was not made in November now waits until the middle of January. In practice, that means it waits until February. By the time the new year actually begins, a quarter of it is gone.
Founders tend to treat planning as a January activity: a fresh start, a new spreadsheet, targets for the year. But the decisions that shape the next eighteen months are rarely made in January. They are made, or avoided, in the last six weeks before the holidays, when there is still enough momentum in the year to act on them.
What November actually decides
Hiring for the first quarter. If a role needs to be filled by March, the search has to start before December. Candidates resign at year end. Those who are not approached by November start the new year somewhere else.
Budgets with your largest customers. Corporate clients set their next-year spend in the last quarter. If your proposal is not in their budget by November, you are competing for whatever is left in an April reallocation.
Pricing. Price changes communicated in November and effective in January land with the least friction. Changes announced in February feel like ambushes.
What to stop. The year end is a natural moment to close a product line, end a contract or wind down an experiment. Projects that roll over into January for lack of a decision usually last another full year.
Why founders miss it
The year feels finished before it is. October and November are when the trading results begin to look settled. The temptation is to coast towards December and save the hard thinking for after the break.
Year-end is busy with the wrong things. Closing deals, chasing collections, end-of-year events. The urgent work crowds out the important decisions, and founders mistake activity for progress.
January promises a clean slate. It is easier to imagine making a hard decision in a new year than to make it now. That promise is almost always broken.
A November discipline
Write the three decisions down this week. Not goals, decisions: the hire, the price change, the thing to stop. Three is enough. More than three becomes a wish list.
Act on each before the first of December. A decision that is announced, signed or started in November has a chance of being live in January. A decision that is still being considered on the fifteenth of December is a decision for March.
Hold one honest review of the year. Not a celebration and not a post-mortem. A plain look at what you said you would do in January and what actually happened. The gap between those two lists is the most useful planning document you will produce all year.
Protect the break. Founders who make their decisions in November can actually rest in December. Founders who did not spend the holidays carrying them.
The longer view
There is a reason I say eighteen months rather than twelve. A hire made in January is productive by April and fully effective by the second half of the year. A price change in January sets the margin you carry into the following year’s negotiations. A product you stop in November frees the team that builds the next thing by mid-year. The effects of a November decision run well past the calendar year it was meant for, and so do the effects of a November decision avoided.
In our markets the timing matters even more. Year-end brings currency pressure, import delays and supplier shutdowns that can stretch into late January. Businesses that enter December with their decisions already made have room to absorb those shocks. Businesses that enter December still deciding absorb them on top of everything else.
Stay-up businesses are built from many ordinary years, and ordinary years are built from decisions made at the right moment rather than the most comfortable one. The founders I admire most do not have better January plans. They simply refuse to let the year end with the important things undecided.
The honest cost
Making hard decisions in November means doing difficult work while you are tired and while everyone around you is winding down. You will have uncomfortable conversations about prices, roles and projects in the weeks when people would rather be celebrating. Some decisions made under that pressure will be wrong, and you will have to correct them in the new year. But a wrong decision made in November can be fixed by February. A right decision postponed to January often never gets made at all.
