What Should You Stop, Start or Continue?

As a part of Entrepreneurs’ Organization, an amazing organization of entrepreneur peers that I’ve been a part of since 2011, I recently went to our new board’s Strategy Summit where our facilitator shared this exercise called Stop, Start or Continue.

It’s very easy and simple team exercise and the results can be profound for our organization.

With a whiteboard and several pages, you simply start answering these questions:

  • What do we need to STOP doing? What’s NOT working? I’ve had a couple of these this year.
  • What do we need to START doing? What COULD work? I always have a list of business ideas to implement in our business. Weighing them by impact is the key.
  • What do we need to CONTINUE doing? What IS working? This is something I neglect to do often.

We’ll be testing this out in our team strategy sessions soon. But I think this can be applied to your personal life or career too!

For a startup, it might be wise to look at it monthly or quarterly (but definitely annually). It seems it would be extremely useful for us to do this exercise quarterly — allowing enough time to thoroughly test ideas.

More than the actual results you get out of this, perhaps the biggest benefit is hearing your team express their opinions on the business.

So … what should you STOP, START, or CONTINUE? Post them in the comments, or send me an email

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4 responses to “What Should You Stop, Start or Continue?”

  1. What timing! I had created a list very similar to this just this month. It helps create an realistic focus and at the end of the day, allows you to see whether you have actually *accomplished* something as opposed to “just been real busy!” You can be real busy and not actually accomplish anything at the end of the day… By seeing what I had to STOP doing, I got rid of “busywork”. By seeing what I needed to CONTINUE doing, I could set measurable goals in my activities, and that naturally led to what do I need to START doing, as I discovered additional links in the productivity chain.

    1. Rock on! Great perspective. This year I’ve been focused on the STOP part. I’m a great Starter, but the Stop part is key for me right now.

      1. Absolutely… Once I created my STOP list, wow… it was quite liberating!!! It’s like, “Hey, where did all this free time come from!??! 🙂

  2. Great post that can be easily implemented into my professional and personal life. Thanks for this piece of information.

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