Business and Personal Goal Setting
Start the New Year Off Right
There has been more written about goal setting for personal, professional, corporate, sports, student and religious reasons than almost any other topic. There are many excellent articles, books, videos and blogs available that provide all the information anyone needs to use these techniques to reach their objectives. Setting meaningful priorities and using this list as a “roadmap” to success is an effective and worthy exercise. So, why do most people either not prioritise at all or take the time to list their goals - and then ignore them?
Human nature is both a wonderful attribute and a potentially serious problem. Focusing on our goals, following up, making honest judgments regarding our progress, making changes when necessary, and evaluating our efforts and achievements – or lack thereof – are difficult tasks for most of us. For those who go on road trips with a map but never look at it, or have a navigation system in their car but don’t turn it on, or those who make detailed lists of New Year’s resolutions on December 29th and then never look at them again, the consensus would dictate that you might be missing the point.
While setting written priorities and goals may not be the only roadmap to success, it remains the best and most effective action plan. The difference between success and lack of achievement can always be related to those that not only have goals, but write them down properly and visit them regularly. Here are generally acknowledged statistics that, at first, may seem hard to believe:
- The number of people who set business and/or personal goals: 3% of the population.
- The number of people who set business and/or personal goals AND write them down: 1% of the population.
For all the articles, books, videos, seminars and blogs that stress the importance of setting specific priorities, most people apparently ignore the whole exercise, while many others use the “set and forget” method of action plan. Although it’s unfortunate that so many managers get so caught up in day-to-day tasks and “putting out fires”, they neglect the larger, more important realities. Contemporary business is NOT static; it is constantly evolving. Therefore, goal setting is more important than ever.
Why not use the new calendar year to break your formerly consistent habit of not setting goals or using the “set and forget” method of prioritizing. If you have not been a hard core goal setter in the past, here is a word of caution. Do not overload yourself with volumes of information regarding all the fashionable or exotic theories of setting goals. Here are 5 simple and effective tips that will help you to have a successful goal setting and achievement experience in the New Year.
Set some goals in your mind. Be careful. This first step is a tempting cop out for many people. “I’ll set my New Year’s goals in my head and just remember them.” Wrong! This step is designed to overcome inertia, the formidable rule of physics that stifles so many projects. Make some time, without phone calls, e-mails, IM’s, etc., to give productive thought to what you would like to accomplish in the coming months.
Write down those goals you believe are the most important to the success of your company as well as to you personally. All of the 142 goals you created in your head will not be appropriate to workable action plan. First, it would be physically impossible for you to accomplish all of them. Second, setting too many priorities may lead to your working at cross purposes, which makes achieving success more difficult. For instance, assume you manage a call centre and one goal is to handle 15% more calls in the coming year. But way down your massive list is another goal that states you’d like to improve the quality and tone of your average received call. Depending on the nature of your calls, improving each call’s quality and handling many more calls may work at direct cross purposes to each other. The common result: Neither goal is achieved since they are working against each other.
Try to keep your goals specific and reasonable. Avoid setting overly large or lofty goals. While they might be worthy, their size and complexity may make achievement difficult. Make your priorities as specific as possible and your action plan will work more effectively. Being specific allows you to measure your progress much easier than the measurement of a general, less defined goal.
Further break down your goals into smaller, more attainable sections. The smaller the parts, the easier to achieve multiple successes, all of which lead to accomplishing the greater goal. These more manageable parts allow you to have many small victories, helping your motivation to continue on your quest to a successful result.
Revisit and track your goals and your progress frequently. Avoid the “set it and forget it” syndrome that can be so damaging to your priorities list. If possible, set a regular and recurring time each week to revisit your goal list, record any progress, and generate some ideas to achieve more during the coming week. After just a few weeks of using this method, you’ll be well on your way to developing a good habit. You will begin to look forward to this productive time that is blocked on your calendar.
As noted, there are hundreds of other suggestions, action plans, high tech and sometimes complex methods and theories regarding goal setting. Often, the complexity of your plan proves to be a major reason you return to the “set it and forget it” mentality that invariably cripples your goal achievement. The KIS (Keep It Simple) theory still works well in modern business, particularly in goal and priority areas. Once you become one of the 1% of the population that creates, writes down, simplifies and regularly revisits your goals, you might want to become more sophisticated in your action plans.
But, many experienced goal setters and achievers, continue to keep it simple year after year. They’ve found that this plan works, even with quite ambitious goals, and see no need to complicate the process. This year, why not become one of the “one percenters”? You might be amazed at what you can accomplish. Your company may be highly impressed with your performance. You might even impress yourself.