“We’ll Sort It After Christmas” is an Expensive Phrase

Why deferring action until the new year, costs you more than you think.

You hear it on your sofa and in your local café. It sounds harmless, a festive pause until the new year. Unfortunately, it’s one of the most expensive habits in business. Ironically, the run-up to Christmas is often the best time to prepare.

Comfort in delay

December marks the end of the calendar year, so we naturally reflect on the months gone by and crave a break. Add in the biggest celebration in the Western world (whether you mark it religiously or not) and it’s no wonder everyone’s ready to stop.

Both leaders and employees use December’s mental slowdown to justify deferring critical business activity, supposedly to maximise from January’s ‘fresh start’. We have to call out this fallacy: nothing magically resets in January.

Most of us don’t rest over Christmas;

we socialise more, eat worse, and remove some critical routines - hardly the recipe for a fresh start. On return, the to-do list is still there, in the same state as we left it.

The Hidden Costs of Waiting

While our intentions are good, there are a number of hidden costs and dangers in postponing activity into the new calendar year, such as:

• Lost momentum: employees mentally check-out, causing a slowdown in progress and potentially lost ideas

• Increased operational risk: issues fester, such as underperformance, policy gaps, poor rotas and maintenance delays

• Increased burnout: people drag themselves through December, creating a rough re-entry in January

• Increased financial drag: activity delayed into January increases costs and reduces potential revenue, a double whammy of bottom line reductions

Beyond operational risks, there’s a simple numbers problem too. It’s important to remember that December constitutes 8% of a year, and if festive drag starts occurring in mid-November, that’s 10% of your year gone immediately. No business leader should allow a slowdown for such a significant amount of time in the year.

The smarter use of December

To make the best use of December, a pragmatic starting point would be to accept that your employees will be anticipating some sort of slowdown, and a brute force approach to pushing a productive December will immediately cause problems with morale. Instead, take a novel approach to how you structure your activities in the run up to the festive period. Leaders can’t force productivity in December, but they can channel it. Ideas include:

• Removing your usual management meetings and creating multiple, shorter task or target-based ‘sprint’ meetings that focus on one or two critical activities at a time

• Encourage cross-functional time that enables employees to solve problems that have persisted for a while

• Introduce incentives for December overperformance

  
  

Be careful not to reward people for meeting normal standards, only for exceeding them. Otherwise, incentives quickly become bribes for baseline performance.

You don’t need to overhaul everything, you just need to know what’s working, what’s risky, and what can be genuinely parked until January, much like parking something in any other month of the year.

Founder’s new year guarantee

Being at the apex of your organisation in December can be daunting. You need to keep everyone engaged while craving rest yourself. Even the bank holidays can feel badly timed.

There’s a way to regain confidence and direction before the year ends. Leaders who use December to get their house in order start January in control, not on the back foot.

Consult DSR helps founder-led businesses end the year clear-headed, not cross-fingered. Our December Business MOT is a focused half-day review that pinpoints operational risks, quick wins, and priorities for 2026, so you can actually enjoy your Christmas break knowing you’re ahead, not behind.

Slots are limited through November and December. Book your MOT and start January ready.