Listen to this Episode on the Top Four Strategies to Lead You into the New Year Here:
As 2024 comes to a close, leaders in the chemical industry are strategizing to finish strong and start fast into 2025. In this episode of The Chemical Show, Victoria Meyer discusses the four key moves that leaders should focus on to ensure momentum into the new year.
Victoria emphasizes the importance of running through the finish line and maintaining stride into the next year. She identifies several dynamic factors that will impact 2025, including a new U.S. administration, global political changes, and upcoming regulatory shifts. Exploring these key elements, Victoria offers strategies to navigate the evolving landscape and turn change into opportunity.
Join us to explore the following key topics this week:
- Reinforce Relationships
- Stress Test Scenarios
- Strengthen Your Supply Chain Strategy
- Assess and Advance Your Career
Killer Quote: “It is not enough to end the year strong. You want to start fast.”
Other links:
Episode 189 with Patty Summers
10 Leadership Lessons from Chemical Executives
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Mark your calendars for The Chemical Summit, September 30-October 1, 2025 – the premier leadership conference by leaders for leaders.
Watch this Solo Episode on Youtube Here:
Finish Strong Start Fast: 4 Key Moves For Leaders To Close 2024 And Launch 2025
Hi, this is Victoria Meyer. Welcome back to The Chemical Show, Where Chemicals Means Business. As we approach the end of 2024, I know that most leaders are looking at closing the year strong and anticipating their strategy and their moves as we head into 2025. So it was important to bring today’s episode to you, which I’m framing as “Finish Strong, Start Fast, Four Key Moves for Leaders in 2024 and 2025.” So we can already anticipate some changes as we’re heading into 2025, right here in the US we have a new president and administration that starts in January. We know that it’s going to have an impact on us and global business activities. If we go across the pond over in Europe and Germany, we have a snap election in February, which will have some impact. Not sure what that brings. We know that we have new laws and regulations set to take effect in the new year and across the chemical industry.
We’ve seen already in 2024, many companies have started to make changes, whether they’re portfolio changes or personnel changes or simply reframing and rethinking their strategy. So while we look ahead into 2025, we know that finishing out 2024 strong is critical. The other thing that I think is important for us all to keep in mind is that change is opportunity. The changes that are coming upon us in 2025 are an opportunity for your business and for you personally. Frankly, we don’t really have a choice. Change is happening. You have to be ready.
So one thing from a personal leadership perspective, we have put together a great guide on 10 leadership lessons from chemical executives. These are insights and tips taken from executives that I’ve interviewed here on The Chemical Show. And. As you look to refresh your business leadership and your personal leadership, and heck, rethinking your career is a classic thing to do at year end. You’ll want to gain access to this guide, which includes these leadership lessons, plus some specific actions that you can take. So to get that guide, head on over to thechemicalshow.com/leadership, and you’ll enter some basic information, name and email address, and we will send that straight to you. We’re also including a link to that guide in the show notes. So don’t miss out.
Now here on to today’s episode, my overall mantra on this and the way I like to think about it is you need to run through the finish line, right? So if you think about the recent Olympics, if you watched the Olympics at all this summer, and you think about the sprinters and the racers, they were not running and stopping right at the finish line, they’re running straight through. And part of the reason you do that is, momentum is critical and key to winning the race. It is not enough to end the year strong. You want to start fast.
In fact, I think about the things that you’re doing today and for the next four weeks as we close out the year and a lot of people will say, “Oh really, there’s only three weeks left?” To a certain degree that’s true, because that last week or 10 days of the year, often people take that time off, to holiday with families, to refresh, to get refocused. But if you don’t use these next three and four weeks wisely. The potential is you’re also missing out on the first couple of weeks of 2025. And I certainly don’t like to have that happen to me. And I know that you don’t want that to happen to you. So here are the four things that I think are important for you to do to finish strong and start fast.
Reinforce Relationships
Number one, reinforce relationships. So we’re in the year end contracting season, sure. Absolutely vital buyers and sellers looking to secure their supply agreements and purchase agreements depending on which side of the table you’re sitting on for the coming year, whether it be one year, two years, three years, whatever length of contract you’re putting in place. Often we think of that contract as the big push in the final piece. Sure, but really, as you and I both know, that is just the beginning. So reinforcing your relationships through those contracts is absolutely vital.
But the second thing is relationships really go beyond the transaction and they are beyond just a traditional customer supplier relationship, right? So they’re your business partners, they’re your team members, there’s other people that you interact with and rely on whether they be your traditional buy-sell, whether they be service providers, whether they be inside your own organization.
So spending time over this next three and four weeks till we get to the end of the year, focusing on relationship and strategic alignment, what’s going well, how can you improve? What can you start doing? Heck, more importantly, what could you stop doing? Always a key one. And how do you want to work together to be successful over the coming year? Framing that now in December is critical to having a really great January. So that’s one reinforce relationships.
Stress Test Scenarios
The second one, stress test scenarios. Now, we know with the new administration there is a lot of chatter, tariffs are in play again, there are new rules and regulations coming in play. What does that mean for your business? I don’t know. You need to think about that. Recently I talked with Patty Summers on Episode 189. I’ll link that one in the show notes as well. We talked about the roles that tariffs play in her business and what the impact of the new administration might be. And so one of the things that Patty had said was the 25% tariffs on products from China, they were able to work around. But if that goes up to 60%, which is something that we’re hearing in the news, that’s a completely different story.
At the same time, we’ve recently heard about tariffs on China and Mexico. There’s other factors at play, but tariffs have an impact. They’re meant to have an impact. What role do they play on your business and how will you respond? So this is the thing with scenario planning. We don’t really know how things are going to manifest, but you do yourself a disservice if you don’t think about what could be. And how would you respond? So these are potential factors like tariffs, supply chain changes, which we know are happening, ownership changes. There’s a lot of portfolio work being discussed in companies. When we talk about portfolio work, that is buying, selling, shutting down assets that potentially has an impact on your business, even if it’s not directly related to you.
It could be a supplier, it’s not your company or it’s not a supplier-customer relationship. There are knock on effects. What are the things that can affect your business and how do you want to respond? What strategies can you put in place today? What leading indicators are there that will let you know how you can plan, how you can respond, how you can strategize.
So stress test your scenarios. That’s my key action.
Strengthen Your Supply Chain Strategy
Number three, strengthen your supply chain strategy. I also thought about calling this one cause I’m doing a lot of play on words today, make friends with marine, which I’ve heard people say. In fact at The Chemical Summit this year, what, somebody said, “What do you need to do? You need to make friends with your marine group, whether that’s in house or at an external supplier.” Why? There are so many factors at play in supply chain in 2025 again. I have called the 2020s the decade of supply chain. There is no doubt about it. And 2025 is going to be just as interesting.
So if we think about what’s going on in marine, everything having to do with global shipments, a number of things. Number one, EUETS. So that’s the Emissions Trading System. Effectively a cap and trade system on emissions. A phased in approach that started in 2024. 2025 is going to be a big impact with 70% of costs applied to admissions. And don’t ask me how those get calculated. I know that you guys know how they are. But 70% of those costs being applicable in 2025 and then a hundred percent in 2026, so understanding what that means to your business, the costs that it might bring into bear, the responses that you need to have become critical. So strengthening your supply chain strategy.
The other thing that’s happening in 2025 on January 1st, the Fuel EU goes into place. What the Fuel EU says is that ships operating within EU waters must use low carbon fuels to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. Okay. There is a wide variety of low carbon fuels that are in play. In fact, at a recent conference earlier this year, I heard a lot of discussion about it, but know that this is also affecting and making it challenging for marine companies to figure out what they’re doing.
So whether they’re using methanol as a marine fuel, there are other marine fuels that are considered low carbon. This is making a dramatic change in marine strategy. Maybe not directly for the chemical companies and maybe not directly for you, but certainly it has an effect in terms of how the shipment of products are moving across the globe and what it means to the tankers, to the container ships, and ultimately to you and your customers. Strengthening your supply chain strategy, understanding how you’re going to deal with that is critical.
The third piece, and this is also tied to marine, but it also has a significant effect on trucking and potentially rail is the US port strikes. So you might say, “Hey, those US port strikes, those were handled in October.” Not so fast my friend, they were handled, they were deferred. So a tentative agreement was put in place that End of that US port strike in October, and it really just delayed it. The new date for assessment and for a potential strike is January 15th. So lots of stuff happened in January. Strengthen your supply chain strategy. Make friends with marine. It will do you good. So that’s my three.
Assess and Advance Your Career
Number four, assess and advance your career. So year end is always a great time for reflection on your own personal leadership, your career, your goals, your advancement. Are you getting what you want out of your career and out of your leadership? How do you want to change, adjust, improve? Now, the reality is some things may be happening to you, right? So we talked earlier about some of the strategy changes, the portfolio changes. I know that there has been some layoffs and some personnel changes at companies, so this may be happening. May have happened to you. It may be happening to your colleagues, but certainly it is the right time to assess and advance your career and understand what that looks like for you.
So how can you change, adjust and improve? Number one, I’m just going to tell you to put this on your calendar right now. The Chemical Summit is going to be held September 30th and October 1st, 2025. It is the premier leadership conference by leaders for leaders. It is 2 days of powerhouse thinking, strategizing, and amplifying your career. So if you haven’t made note of that yet. And in fact, this may be one of the first times that you’ve heard the dates because we haven’t been announcing them so much yet. Mark your calendars. You’re going to want to be there.
The second thing is level up your leadership. And one way you can do that is by downloading those 10 Leadership Lessons I talked about at the beginning of our episode here. 10 Leadership Lessons, which are insights and tactics that you can reflect on, take, and apply to your own career and leadership, from executives that I’ve interviewed here on The Chemical Show. So go ahead to head on over to thechemicalshow.com/leadership and enter your information and we will send you that guide.
The reality is, those are 10 things, but if you just do one thing, and when I speak to groups, when I speak with executives, when I coach the leaders that I coach, I always say, just do one thing, pick one thing you’re going to do differently tomorrow and next week and next month and next year. And by focusing in on that one thing, you know that you can take action.
Now across this episode, I’ve given you four things. Four things that allow you to finish fast and start strong. So reinforce relationships, stress test your scenarios, strengthen your supply chain strategy, and then fourthly assess and advance your career.
I hope you’ve enjoyed this episode. Please send me an email, leave me a message. And if you really love this episode, share it with a friend or a colleague and leave a rating or review because they do matter. So thanks for joining us today. Keep listening, keep following, keep sharing, and we will talk with you again soon.