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Customer first. How often do you put yourself in your customer’s shoes when you are making a decision related to your product? How often do you make your company’s operating goals, input from management or sales, recent competitive action or, in marketing communications, your personal preference or taste drive your decision?

Live and breathe market research. “Customer first” begins with a good understanding of your customer. Market research is not limited to surveys, focus groups, benchmarking, modeling and all those techniques we learned in business school. How about a commitment to talking to customers? Set goals appropriate for your business. Agency people can help clients by asking for market research data or including market research and campaign monitoring in their proposals.

Adopt a blog or two. Participate in a dialogue with your peers by setting up your RSS feed to blogs that pertain to your industry, or any blog for that matter. Get exposure to industry news, new ideas or just new ways to look at familiar issues. Some of our favorite blogs are listed on the sidebar here. Or find your own. And of course we’d love for you to join us or to suggest your favorites.

Take a chance. Remember the quintessential risk-reward curve that your finance professor showed you way back when. Start with avoiding the temptation to hedge your single most important message by putting in some secondary goodies (my pet peeve). Trust your instinct the next time you have to make a decision—on a new hire, a new agency or a new campaign. Above all, prioritize and commit. I like the way Al Ries makes the case in his book Focus.

Block out specific times of the day to read and respond to e-mails. For those of us who are overly diligent with our e-mails, we’ll learn to be less reactive and more focused and to avoid impulsive responses. For those e-mail avoiders, it will help relieve that unwelcome backlog of unread e-mails. Try these Tips for Mastering E-mail Overload.

As for me, I am going to work on all of the above in my own business and with my clients. Along the way, I plan on plenty of exercise, a regular dose of good reading, and conversations with friends and colleagues to keep me in shape to deal with the challenges and take advantage of the opportunities of the new year.

Peace and prosperity to you and yours.

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