Ask HR: Why should we bother with rituals if they don’t benefit us or the company?

Our procurement manager has asked us as members of his team to come up with resolutions for the year. We did the same thing last year and achieved some of the goals, but not all of them. I am seriously questioning the relevance and importance of this exersise. To me it looks like a useless ritual that we need to abandon. Why should we bother with rituals if they do not benefit us? 

Some people have a tradition of creating new year resolutions at the beginning of each year. Perhaps they see a new year as a clean slate on which to redraw aspirations for their lives. Such resolutions might be geared to help them rekindle efforts toward goals that may have since been buried under the pile of other competing priorities of the previous year. They could also, among other purposes, be developed as a point of departure from an unenviable course of life. Whether the intended outcomes of such resolutions are realised or not depends much on the clarity and suitability of one’s goals, besides the focus and doggedness required to achieve them.

Was your manager referring to personal or professional resolutions? The fact that you have achieved some of the goals that were part of past resolutions suggests that it was a worthwhile endeavour. It is not common to achieve all the goals one sets every time. There are numerous intervening circumstances, external and internal, that could alter the course of events and the locus of your efforts. In many cases, progress is borne out of a process rather than a dazzling event that instantly ushers in the substance of your aspirations. In any event, nothing stops you from pursuing goals that remain on your plate from the resolutions of the previous year alongside new ones. Some goals have no expiry date.

The beginning of a new year might present what appears to be a natural opportunity for a fresh start, yet any hour could be your finest to start in the direction of your dreams. The turning of the years is a function of passage of time. It does not supply impetus for making desired changes in life. Several years could come and go, leaving you in the same situation. It is not about rituals or certain times of the year but the commitment with which you pursue your resolutions. A new year is good, a new mind even better.

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