In the first 4 days of this new year, the word 'flourish' has been mentioned to me more than I can ever remember. I'm taking it as a sign that this should be our focus for 2017 not just in our personal lives but in the businesses we help. On a side note - this article was the catalyst for writing this blog.

So it got me thinking (and researching) what are the best things businesses can do to flourish over the coming year. There are lots of tips out there so here are three of my favourites.

There are enough statistics to highlight the correlation with financially flourishing companies and the positive culture that exist within these companies. Stats aside, the well-being of your company is inextricably linked to the well-being of your employees. Yes financial metrics are important, but so are the people that work to achieve those targets. Define metrics with the aim of measuring and building human flourishing in these five areas:

• Positive emotion - happiness and life satisfaction.
• Engagement - being “in flow” and engaged with life.
• Relationships - positive connections with other people.
• Meaning - belonging to and serving something bigger than the self.
• Achievement - accomplishment pursued for its own sake.

As a parent, I've always been a proponent of identifying and focusing on my children's strengths rather than their weaknesses (and like all kids they excel with the iPad!). So it has always boggled my simple mind as to why most companies still choose to dwell on one's "improvement needs" in a once a year performance evaluation. Instead invest in workshops and certified coaches to draw out the uniqueness and creativeness of every individual employee. Did you know that more than 15 million people around the world have taken the Gallup StrengthsFinder test and most don't really know what to do with that information?

What's the problem with new year's resolutions? As this little four year old girl very wisely put it, we tend to think that we will change in one big moment when instead it happens in thousands of little moments. So for your business, instead of thinking you need to automate everything in one go and expect overnight improvements (which you won't get and your investment will be flushed down her little brother's toilet), why not look to automate one process or area of your business this year. Find tasks that you or your employees spend a lot of time doing manual work on and look for an automated alternative.

From the posts and blogs I've read, many saw 2016 as a year of slowness and stagnation. Maybe if we all did our utmost to create work environments where our employees and businesses can flourish, our communities, cities, countries and nations would also flourish. Who knows...

Written by Tony Ta | Cheerleader and Connector at Cloude8 | www.cloude8.com