We’re in Q4 – whether you’ve planned for it or not – and the thing that catches people out every year is just how little time there really is in this busy period. From now until most offices wind down for Christmas, there are about 11 working weeks, and once you take out annual leave, half-term, the chaos around Black Friday (and at least one afternoon lost to the Christmas party), you’re left with quite a bit less than that.

The to-do list, unfortunately, still thinks it has a full quarter to play with.

So this isn’t a post about how to squeeze more into Q4. It’s about getting your team through the last stretch of the year in decent shape, with the right things done, and without January turning into a write-off.

Clearbox has managed Q4 communications campaigns for Amazon for the last 11 years, so we’ve learned a thing or two about being ready for the busy shopping season when it comes to teamwork. Here’s some of what we’ve learned. 

Make a list and check it twice 

Every team goes into Q4 carrying a backlog, whether that’s the campaign that slipped from Q2, the website refresh that’s been “nearly there” (guilty) since the spring or the thought leadership series someone promised the board in a moment of optimism. Not all of it is going to get done, and that’s perfectly fine as long as nobody pretends otherwise.

It’s worth sitting down with your team this week and sorting everything into three piles:

• Must land before Christmas, because it’s contracted, promised or tied to a date you can’t move.
• Better in January, which, if you’re being realistic, covers most things.
• Quietly dropping, for the work nobody will notice has gone (and there’s always more of this than people like to admit).

The second pile matters most, because moving work into January is good planning rather than failure. A launch rushed out in the second week of December, when news desks are thin and everyone is distracted, will almost always do worse than the same launch done properly at the end of January, and we’d take a well-timed story over a hurried one every time.

Know the calendar you’re working against

Q4 is really three quite different months, and each one needs to be treated differently.

October is the last ‘properly normal’ month of the year, when people are at their desks, decisions get made and journalists still answer their emails, so anything that needs sign-off from a senior stakeholder should be sorted now.

November gets busy and noisy as retail goes all-in on Black Friday and Cyber Monday, the Christmas ads start arriving and every brand ends up fighting for the same attention. Unless you’re in retail, it’s worth asking whether you need to be part of that fight at all, because sometimes the smartest move is to go quiet and let everyone else do the shouting.

December is shorter than anyone plans for, with realistically two working weeks before things start to slow down. Plenty of media outlets planned their Christmas content back in the summer (gift guides especially), so if you’re only pitching festive stories now you’re late, although not necessarily too late.

After that comes the stretch between Christmas and New Year, when nothing much happens and nobody admits to working, so it’s far better to plan around it than to pretend it’s usable time.

Spend the budget well rather than fast

Then there’s the use-it-or-lose-it budget, the annual ritual where money that couldn’t be found in March suddenly needs spending by the end of December.

We understand why it happens, since nobody wants their budget cut next year because they underspent this year. The problem is that rushed spending rarely achieves much, and a hastily booked event, a campaign thrown together in three weeks or a paid push with no real plan behind it might tick a box for finance, but does very little else.

If you’ve got budget left, the better option is to put it towards something that pays off in the new year, such as content you can use from January, research that gives you a story to tell in Q1, photography and video of your own people that will earn its keep all year, or training for your team. The money still gets spent this year, but it carries on working for you long after.

Look after the people doing the work

Q4 is when teams start to get tired, because everyone has been going since January, the nights are drawing in and the workload tends to rise just as energy levels drop. A few practical things help far more than pizza on a Friday afternoon. Although pizza is always welcome, of course. 

Get leave booked now, because people tend to leave holidays until the last minute and then everyone ends up off in the same week of December, whereas sorting the rota in October avoids the scramble. Clearbox team with annual leave left, BOOK YOUR LEAVE PLEASE! 

Be clear about cover, including who looks after what while people are away and who picks up the phone if a client has a problem on the 22nd, and write it down (we run a cover rota for exactly this reason).

Stop adding to the pile, so that when something new comes in, something else comes off, because saying yes to everything in Q4 is how good people burn out.

Say thank you properly, directly to the person and for the specific thing they did, rather than in an all-staff email.

None of this is complicated, but it’s very easy to forget when everyone is busy.

Plan January before December ends

This is the step most teams skip, and they tend to pay for it every year. The first couple of weeks of January are traditionally slow for news, with journalists coming back to quiet inboxes and pages to fill, which means brands that turn up with something ready can win coverage that would be much harder to get in November.

That only works if the thinking has been done before Christmas, because nobody is writing a strong press release on 2 January with a post-Christmas brain. Before you break up, it’s worth having the following in place:

• Your first story of the year, drafted, approved and ready to pitch.
• A rough Q1 content plan, which doesn’t need to be perfect but does need to exist.
• Your key dates for the first quarter, including the awareness days that genuinely matter to your business and none of the ones that don’t.
• A clear owner for each piece of work, so nobody spends their first week back trying to work out who’s doing what.

Your team will appreciate it, and your January self will appreciate it even more.

Do the review before the party rather than after it

The last thing to do before everyone switches off is spend an hour looking back over the year at what worked, what didn’t and what you’d never do again. Early December is the right time for it, while it’s all still fresh and people still care, because if you leave it until January it tends to turn into a vague conversation that nobody remembers.

Five questions are usually enough to get you there:

What got results for us this year? What took up time without delivering anything? What should we be doing more of in the new year? What did we love? What did we learn?

The answers will tell you more than any planning template ever will.

That’s it – how to get your team through Q4. Oh – the most important part – make sure you enjoy your festive break!