A Successful Winter Starts With a Review, Not a Rescue
In August, I go through the bee hives I keep and run a full review before the weather turns.
Not because something's wrong, it’s because a successful winter is decided in August, well before the temperatures start to drop.
🐝I check the queen. Is she still laying eggs in a healthy pattern?
🐝I check the brood. Is the population moving in the right direction for the season ahead, or falling behind?
🐝I check their honey stores. Do they have enough honey to carry them through the winter, or do they need feeding now, while there's still time to act?
I run every client review the exact same way. With over fifteen years in Human Resources, I know how important it is to be clear on what you want next and how the right preparation makes you stand out against the other applicants. We sit down and take an honest look at where you are today and diagnose specifically what's needed next. Then we plan realistic steps forward, deliberately, based on your goals and skills.
It's not a coincidence that I use the same discipline working with clients and my honeybees. Each hives needs are different, success looks different for each hive to make it through the winter, but at the end of the day meeting the needs of each client (or hive) leads to a healthy hive, or I mean a fulfilling career.
Recovery is the honest review. Where do things actually stand right now, separate from what you assume or hope is true? In a hive: is the queen strong or are you assuming she is because she was earlier in the season. In a career: is your role actually stable or are you assuming it is because it was last year.
Reflection is the specific diagnosis. What does this hive, or career, actually need to make it through the season ahead? Not a generic checklist. The real honest, gap, between what you are doing and what you want.
Redesign is the deliberate plan built from that diagnosis. This is feeding the hive now because there won’t be enough honey in the winter, or preparing to make a specific career move because the diagnosis showed exactly where you will find fulfillment and highlight your strengths.
Most people, and most consultants, skip the review entirely and wait for winter to tell them what was wrong. I've watched that timing cost people options they would've had if they'd prepared three months earlier.
I don't skip the review. Not in the apiary, not in my coaching. That's not a quirky founder detail - it's the actual methodology I follow, and it's the reason clients come back.
If you want to see how this plays out in practice, specifically for what happens before a layoff, not the scramble after, I'm walking through it live on August 26th at 6:30pm CT in a free webinar called The Layoff-Proof Checklist: What to Do Before the Pink Slip. It's not a generic "update your resume" webinar. It's the same review-and-diagnose process I just described, applied to your own career before you need it.
→ Save your seat: heidikentmack.com
If you are already past the "should I review" stage and actually in it . The bad feeling in your gut, a reorg rumor, or an actual notice? Skip the webinar and just reply to this post or message me directly. First conversation's free, and it starts with the same review, applied to your specific situation instead of a hypothetical one.
Today, I run The Reset Framework, the business I founded and lead, built around exactly this: Recovery, Reflection, Redesign, in that order, every time. No skipped reviews. No panic-fixes. Just the same diagnosis I give every hive, given to your career instead.
