With 2012 well under way, what are your expectations for your business' performance for the rest of the year? - SmartBrief

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With 2012 well under way, what are your expectations for your business’ performance for the rest of the year?

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Leadership

SmartPulse — our weekly nonscientific reader poll in SmartBrief on Leadership — tracks feedback from more than 160,000 business leaders. We run the poll question each Tuesday in our e-newsletter.

Last week, we asked: With 2012 well under way, what are your expectations for your business’ performance for the rest of the year?

  • About what we originally expected: 48.92%
  • Better than originally expected: 28.03%
  • Worse than originally expected: 12.94%
  • Much better than originally expected: 7.95%
  • Much worse than originally expected: 2.16%

Are things looking up? It seems either most of us had more dire expectations for 2012 and they’re simply not as bad as we thought they’d be, or the business climate is steadily improving and we’re seeing those effects begin to emerge. Regardless of the reason, as leaders, we need to consider what we should do with this unexpected good fortune. Are there hiring decisions you’ve put off? Investments to be made? Funds to sock away into a contingency fund? Be deliberate with what you do with this upside, and be sure to communicate the rationale to your team. Perhaps the Mayans were wrong about this year.

Mike Figliuolo is managing director of thoughtLEADERS and author of “One Piece of Paper: The Simple Approach to Powerful, Personal Leadership.”