A new financial year = a fresh chance to take stock, reset your focus, and get your business humming. But boosting performance doesn’t mean working longer hours or chasing growth for the sake of it.

It’s about getting clear on what actually drives results in your business and then making sure you’re spending your time, energy and resources in the right places.

Here are 5 things we suggest every business owner looks at to give their performance a lift in FY26. Watch below or keep reading for more!

 

 

1. set a small number of clear priorities for each step of the plan

 

Focus beats busy every time. Choose a few key goals you really want to nail this year and then break them down into small steps.

Tackling things step-by-step is important because often step 1 needs to be done before step 2 – this way, you are not tempted to try and do everything at once.

Laying out the steps also helps your team stay focused on what matters most right now, rather than getting distracted by what’s not urgent.

I love using what I call a Step Plan to create focus every quarter. You can download a copy of our Step Plan template here.

 

2. get across your numbers [properly]

 

You don’t need to be a spreadsheet whiz, but you do need visibility… and a budget to set expectations. Upfronts are still probably the best benchmark of performance.

Understand what’s driving your profit, where your cash is going, and how you’re tracking month to month. One way to do this is through an exercise I call ‘raising the bar of average’. Check out a video on it here.

I love being able to generate profit by division or by person. It helps you to see which areas are more profitable as a percentage and as a $ value.

If you can’t produce the numbers you need, now’s the time to update your data processes so you can collate them easily for the year ahead. As they say ‘garbage in, garbage out’ so think about the source of data and automate the process as much as possible. I love using tracking categories in Xero!

Work with your accountant or advisor to build the reporting you’ll actually use. There are some great insights from Lielette Calleja on what your bookkeepers will be doing in the background to make sure your numbers are reliable, catch the full article here.

 

3. make sure your team is on the bus

 

The best plans mean nothing if your team’s not aligned.

Whenever I’ve skipped the strategic planning step of understanding ‘where we are now’, the plans are always somewhat deficient.

Get your team involved by reflecting together on what’s going well and what’s not. We like to break it down into ‘the good, the bad + the ugly’. Here’s a video showing how to run this activity with your team.

Do your people know what success looks like this year? Paint that picture for them in as much detail as possible, and help them see what achieving it means. I love using feeling words to bring it to life, asking: How will it feel when we hit this success?

 

4. look for performance blockers

 

Is clunky tech slowing you down? Are there bottlenecks in your workflow?

I love the quote ‘better is better than more’… yet often, we just pile on more tasks instead of fixing what needs work. Make sure you remove the blockers to performance and consider what would make things ‘better’ rather than just feeding more into a broken machine.

Business planning is a series of iterations towards one long-term goal, but it’s often the speed bumps, hurdles, and brick walls along the way that slow us down. Identify the bottlenecks and get ‘unstuck’ from whatever’s holding you back.

Process mapping is a great way to find blockages but so is just asking your team!  With the opportunities AI presents [whatever form that takes for you], there may be big leaps you can make to substantially automate your processes.

 

5. check in regularly, not just at EOFY

 

Performance isn’t a set-and-forget thing… it’s a continuous process! What worked? What didn’t work? Why didn’t it work? Does the plan need to be changed?

Make time monthly or at least quarterly to review progress and reset priorities with the team if things shift.  I simply like to use a traffic light system on each of the agreed steps:

✅ Done

🟡 On track

🔴 Needs attention

 

The businesses that perform best aren’t always the ones with perfect plans, they’re the ones that actually use their plans and follow through on implementation.

 

set up for a strong FY26

 

Better performance doesn’t mean doing more, it means doing what matters, better.

As you kick off FY26, take the time to get clear, get aligned, and set your business up for a strong year ahead.

 

we’re here to help

 

Need a sounding board? Whether it’s your numbers, team or game plan, we’re here to help you boost performance where it counts.

Get in touch with your usual contact at businessDEPOT, or feel free to give us a buzz on 1300BDEPOT.

 

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