One of my important habits of a leader is crafting a weekly email to my team, outlining upcoming events and setting the pace for the week ahead.

Since we’re a virtual company, it’s an important touch point and writing to the team is a habit I’m happy to have established. The email provides a chance for me to connect with the team, to show that I care about them, to be human, and to help everyone see how their work fits into the larger picture of our company.

As we begin the year, I also sent a note outlining our two focus areas for the year ahead.

To win in 2015, our team will focus on two main areas: creating capacity and refining processes.

Creating Capacity One of our company values is growth. This refers to growing/expanding as a company and to individual growth. In order for us to grow, we must create capacity for that growth, individually and corporately. If we are going to grow as a company, we must continually look for and add talented people to our team. (We’ve just posted an opening!) If we are going to grow individually, we need to be in a process of continually learning how we can personally increase our capacity.

Refining Processes We are working to refine processes, both processes involving delivery to clients and internal processes. We want to refine our processes for delivering to clients to increased clarity so that we can create the greatest possibility for fantastic results. Internally, we want to streamline and simplify processes to save time and eliminate overhead and unnecessary pre-work.

In order to provide greater focus, I am choosing specific subcategories of these two initiatives to hone in on each quarter. For the first quarter, I am working specifically on creating capacity on our project management team (thus, our recent posting), refining our hiring process, and refining our training/onboarding processes.

Tell me something! What are your focus areas as you move into the new year?

If you’re looking for additional inspiration as you move into 2015, check out the posts in the Leadership Development Carnival, which I’m hosting at leadchangegroup.com for 22 amazing posts with inspiration for the year ahead.