🗓️ Months are Out, Quarters are In: Hack Your Goals with Fiscal Quarters
What quarter does your star sign fall into? Leo? You’re a classic Q3 and you need to be buttoning up those proposals. Pisces? You’re sitting pretty in Q1 ready to take on new projects!
With Ask Your Work Wife, find out how there is seasonality to business practices that affect your job prospects, spending and vacation time more than your Zodiac. 💫 New episodes drop Wednesdays on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.
In today's email:
Read: there’s a method to the corporate madness and it’s called quarters
Listen: Seasonality in Corporate America
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Hack Your Goals with Fiscal Quarters
Caught in a hiring freeze? Can’t seem to get time off at the end of the year? It might all seem super random, but there’s a method to the corporate madness and it’s called quarters.
We’re here to teach you how to understand fiscal calendars and how each quarter will directly affect your job, spending, and even your well-deserved time off. Let’s get you lounging by a pool in Q3!
🎧 On the go? Listen to Episode 69 | Turn! Turn! Turn! To Every Quarter There Is a Season on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.
First, let’s consult the Work Wives' encyclopedia of business jargon:
YEAR: Duh, a year is 12 months mapped to the Gregorian calendar named after some strange gods and Roman numbers, packed with some extra holidays and misc. bullshit too.
CORPORATE AMERICA YEAR: The fiscal year which indicates when your accounting starts and ends for a 12 month period. Can vary between industries and even companies.
QUARTERS: Three-month periods within that fiscal year usually referred to as Q1, Q2, Q3, and you guessed it, Q4.
This is all just a way to measure a company’s progress. Even your manager’s manager has a higher-up they report to like shareholders and the market at large who all have big expectations. Quarters are the quirky way we’ve settled on to track those promises and goals.
Okay, that’s enough encyclopedia for now. So how does this affect YOU?! (It majorly does.)
For this exercise, let’s assume Q1 starts in January.
💡 Note: If your industry’s fiscal year is a mystery, go sleuthing, Sherlock, and ask your mentor! Or go poking around for the shareholder’s press releases. Or go make friends with your finance department if your company isn’t public. Fiscal years are sometimes the worst best kept secret.
Q1 (Vanessa's Favorite Quarter)
The forecast is all sunshine in Q1 — aside from it usually falling in January. The fresh budget is begging to be spent on company retreats, new hires and fun projects. People are DOING things with all their extra gusto; executing, driving, getting shit done! Ramp up those resume gold stars with stretch projects. LFG.
Q2
Welcome to the exploratory period. We’re taking RFPs, schmoozing with vendors, indulging demos, and getting samples. So… It’s mostly just a sappy romcom montage. There’s iceskating, dessert sharing, falling asleep on their shoulder. It’s all cute as hell. No drama. No major plot points.
(Psst! This is the quarter to start a new batch of resumes!)
Q3
Summer is in full swing from mid Q2 to mid Q3. It’s just fine to join the montage of sun-kissed cheeks and beachy waves, but if you’re new here, you know we’ve got a better way. School is back, vacations are constant, and you (yes, you at the mid-to-bottom of the pecking order) are sending your research up the chain of command. C-suite knows how the budget will shake out for the rest of the year, which is why layoffs tend to happen around this time. Brace for pivots from the top.
✨ NOW… hear us out. ✨ Something special happens in this quarter. It’s called September. It’s our fav because it’s right after the post-summer slump, but before the holiday chaos. The major Q4 planning really depends on what decisions are made in September. You’re running two timelines: executing this year’s goals and preparing for next year. Godspeed 🫡
Everything that comes out of your C-suite and your executive management is a result of all those meetings and all those budget approvals. And it's not just them! It’s their board, it’s their investors, anyone above them.
—Holland
Q4
C-suite and VP’s are on “do not disturb” hashing things out in board meetings. Be mindful that the collective bandwidth is stretched thin and the fate of the next fiscal year is the #1 priority.
Patience gets shorter, tempers get hotter and voices get louder, simply because it’s crunch time.
—Vanessa
Corporate Events
Pack your bags, it’s time to see your coworkers drunk! A.k.a., things like shareholder events, public announcements, launches, conventions, or summits. They’re not industry standard and they’re usually a little weird, but are often mandatory! Avoid taking vacation leading up to these because they demand lots of planning and preparation.
Year in Review
What’s super important is that each quarter signifies different energies, activities, intentions and goals no matter where they map to the normal calendar. Use seasonality in Corporate America to hack your goals and get what you want.
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Seasonality in Corporate America
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