On the last day of November, the owner of a small climbing gym stands near the front desk after closing. She’s looking at the wall where members pin notes. There’s a thank-you card from a parent whose shy kid now climbs every Saturday. A sign-up sheet for the volunteer cleanup day, mostly full. A note from a longtime member who’s moving away. A flyer for a route-setting clinic that never happened because nobody had time to organize it.
November was a good month. It was also a scattered one. She’s grateful for a lot of people. She’s not sure what to do next.
That feeling, gratitude without a plan, is common at the end of a month, and especially at the end of a year. This post follows an invented, independent climbing gym through one strategy session at the end of November. It shows how a business can look back at what the month gave it, then turn that gratitude into a few clear next steps. The gym, its people, and its members are illustrative, not a client story, and nothing here describes a real result.
Our invented gym is an independent bouldering and rope-climbing gym run by an owner we’ll call Jess. It has a small staff, a few part-time route setters, and a loyal community of members: college students, families with kids in youth programs, adults who climb before work, and a few retirees who discovered climbing late and love it.
In November, a lot happened. The youth program finished its fall session. Members volunteered for a big cleanup day. A longtime staff member left for a new job. A few members organized a food drive at the front desk on their own. And Jess received more thank-you notes than she’d expected.
She wants to honor all of it. She also knows she can’t do everything.
At the end of a busy month, most owners remember two things: what went wrong, and what’s due next. The good things blur together. The people who helped get a quick “thanks” and are forgotten by the next week.
That’s not a character flaw. It’s what busy work does to memory. Good things become normal quickly. The volunteer who always shows up starts to feel like part of the furniture. The member who refers friends becomes “one of our regulars.”
A strategy session is a chance to slow down long enough to notice what actually happened, and then to make choices about it.
A strategy session isn’t a proposal meeting. Nobody is pitching Jess a package of services. It’s a working session with a clear purpose: to leave with decisions she can act on and hand to her team.
For a month-end look back, those decisions are:
Gratitude shapes all four. But gratitude alone isn’t a plan.
Before the gratitude list, the session spends a few minutes on what didn’t go well in November. The route-setting clinic never happened. A few youth families felt they heard about schedule changes too late. The front desk was short-staffed on two busy weekends.
The facilitator keeps this part short and blame-free. The point isn’t to find someone at fault. It’s to notice patterns: the clinic didn’t happen because nobody owned it, and the schedule changes went out late because they depended on one person’s memory.
Those lessons matter for the plan. They explain why the capacity limits and if-then plans are written the way they are. But the session doesn’t dwell there. A month-end review that’s only about problems leaves a team tired. A review that starts with what went wrong, then spends most of its time on what the month gave, leaves a team ready to work.
The session begins with a simple exercise. Jess and her two senior staff members list everything November gave them. Not achievements. Gifts: people, moments, and help they didn’t have to receive.
Their list includes:
Then the facilitator asks a different question: what if each of these hadn’t happened?
That question comes from research. In studies published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Minkyung Koo, Sara Algoe, Timothy Wilson, and Daniel Gilbert found that mentally subtracting a positive event, imagining how it might never have happened, improved people’s feelings more than thinking about how it did happen. People didn’t predict that effect in advance.
That research was about personal life, not business, and it doesn’t predict any business result. But as a session exercise, it’s gentle and useful. When Jess imagines November without the volunteers, the cleanup day doesn’t happen. Without the route setters, the youth competition is a scramble. Without the departing staff member, half the youth program’s families wouldn’t have stayed. The gifts come into focus.
With the list in front of them, the session gets harder. Jess can’t thank, expand, or build on every one of these at once. The session forces a choice: which relationships matter most for the gym’s next season?
After a long discussion, Jess chooses one priority for winter: keeping the youth program strong after the departing staff member leaves. It’s the program that families thanked her for most. It’s also the one most at risk.
That choice shapes everything else. It means the gym’s gratitude, time, and attention will focus first on youth families, the remaining youth coaches, and the volunteers who support them.
It also means some good ideas will wait. The route-setting clinic, a new adult beginners’ series, and a partnership with a nearby college club all go on a “not this season” list. They’re good ideas. They’re just not the priority.
The next question is capacity. Jess’s team is small, and winter is busy.
They agree on limits:
These limits protect the priority. Without them, the team would try to do everything and do the most important thing poorly.
Next, the session decides where the gym will put its attention.
For youth families, the channels are personal: phone calls from Jess, a handwritten note in each child’s cubby at the last fall session, and a short in-person meet-the-coach evening. The gym won’t rely on a mass email for this. It will send a winter session reminder by email, but the thank-yous will be personal.
For volunteers, the channel is the front desk board and a short thank-you at the next cleanup day, plus a handwritten note to the members who organized the food drive.
For the wider membership, the gym’s social pages will share one post thanking everyone for November, with photos of the cleanup day (with permission) and a thank-you to the departing staff member.
The session also decides what not to do: no new social media channels, no paid ads this winter, and no newsletter redesign. Those can wait.
Good intentions fade. Jess knows that if the plan says “thank volunteers more,” it won’t happen in the middle of a busy January.
So the session turns gratitude into specific if-then plans. Research supports this approach. In a five-week field experiment with couples, published in Scientific Reports, Yen-Ping Chang and colleagues tested a brief technique using implementation intentions to express gratitude, specific plans for when and how to say thanks. The technique increased everyday expressed gratitude, and that change was linked to couples spending more time together.
That study was about romantic partners, not businesses or members, and it doesn’t predict business results. But the method is practical. Jess’s team writes if-then plans like these:
These are small. That’s why they work. They don’t depend on remembering to be grateful. They’re built into the gym’s routines.
The last decision is how Jess will know whether the plan worked.
She doesn’t set a target for membership numbers or revenue, and the session doesn’t promise any. Instead, she chooses a measure tied directly to the priority: how many youth families who were enrolled in the fall return for the winter session, and what they say about the transition. She’ll compare it with her own records from past seasons, not with any outside benchmark.
She’ll also check a few softer signs: whether the new youth coach feels supported, whether volunteers sign up for the next cleanup day, and whether the if-then thank-yous actually happen. If they don’t, that’s a sign the plan needs adjusting, not that gratitude doesn’t matter.
One item on the gratitude list causes a real discussion. A few members organized a food drive at the front desk in November, on their own. It went well. Now some staff want to make it an official gym program.
The session slows down here. Turning a member-led effort into a gym program could be a way of honoring it. It could also take it away from the people who started it, or add work the team doesn’t have capacity for.
So Jess decides to ask the organizers what they’d like. If they want to keep running it, the gym will support them with space at the front desk, a mention in the member email, and a personal thank-you. If they’d like the gym to take it over, that goes on the “not this season” list until spring, when there’s time to do it well.
That’s a small decision, but it reflects a bigger idea: gratitude sometimes means getting out of the way. Not every good thing a community does needs to become a business program.
A few habits can make a month-end session less useful:
Trying to act on every good idea. A plan with ten priorities has none. Choose one, maybe two.
Thanking people in general terms. “Thanks to all our wonderful members” is easy to write and easy to forget. Specific thanks, to specific people, for specific things, is what people remember. (That’s one reason the gym’s if-then plans name the moment and the person.)
Skipping the capacity conversation. Gratitude can make people want to do more. The plan has to fit the team you actually have.
Measuring the wrong thing. If the priority is youth program continuity, the measure should be about youth families, not total memberships or social media followers.
Making the plan only one person understands. If the owner is the only one who can explain it, the plan isn’t finished.
Forgetting to look back next month. A month-end session works best as a habit. Next month, the first question is: did we do what we planned, and what did December give us?
Part of a good plan is naming what you won’t do. Jess’s list includes:
These commitments protect trust. They make the gym’s gratitude believable.
The departing staff member’s knowledge is one of November’s biggest gifts, and one of its biggest risks. If she leaves without passing it on, the youth program loses more than a coach.
So the session includes a handoff plan:
A plan you can hand to someone else is worth more than a plan only you understand. This handoff plan is something the new coach can follow without asking Jess to re-explain it.
At the end of the session, Jess leaves with a short written package, not a slide deck. It includes:
It fits on two pages. Her staff can read it in ten minutes and know exactly what to do.
A plan is only as good as its first week. So the session ends by naming what happens in the next seven days.
Jess will call the first five youth families on Tuesday and Wednesday evenings. The departing staff member and the new coach will meet on Thursday to start the handoff guide. The front desk lead will post the first volunteer thank-yous on the board by Friday. And on Saturday, Jess will check in with her team for ten minutes: what got done, what didn’t, and what needs to change.
Small, specific, and owned. That’s how a grateful plan turns into a grateful December.
The same session could serve a very different organization. Imagine a volunteer trail-maintenance club at the end of its fall work season.
Its November gifts might include volunteers who showed up on cold mornings, a landowner who granted trail access, a hardware store that donated tools, and a retiring crew leader. Its priority might be training a new crew leader before spring. Its capacity limits would depend on volunteer time, not staff hours. Its channels might include a potluck, handwritten notes, and a short email to members.
Its measure would be different, too: how many trained crew leaders it has by spring, and how many volunteers return for the first workday. And its “not this season” list might include a new trail project that would stretch volunteers too thin.
The principles would be the same: notice what you were given, choose one priority, protect capacity, and build gratitude into routines.
If you’d like to try a month-end or year-end strategy session, bring:
And bring the willingness to say “not this season” to some good ideas. That’s often the hardest part, and the most important.
After the session, Jess goes back to the board by the front desk. She pins up a new note in her own handwriting: “Thank you for November. We noticed. We’re grateful.”
Then she takes down the flyer for the route-setting clinic and puts it in a folder labeled “Spring.” It’s a good idea. It can wait.
That’s what planning grateful next steps looks like. Not doing everything. Choosing what matters, protecting it, and making sure the people who helped know they were seen.
If you’d like help turning a month of gratitude into a clear plan for next season, start a conversation with WeKinnect.
Written By
Darlene Gagnon is the founder of WeKinnect Global Branding Agency. Guided by the core value of Service before Self, she works with entrepreneurs and family-owned legacy businesses. She focuses especially on restaurants, arts, and travel and tourism. Darlene writes on Branding, Positioning, Marketing Strategy, Public Relations, Storytelling, and Entrepreneurship. WeKinnect serves entrepreneurs and family-owned legacy businesses across restaurants, arts, travel and tourism, banking, home services, nonprofits, and the pet industry, and Darlene brings that same spirit of service to every piece she writes.
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