2010 Is Just Around The Corner, Have You Set Goals For The Year? October 14, 2009
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Sales “guru” Zig Ziglar said “What you get by achieving your goals is not as important as what you become by achieving your goals.”
It’s amazing the number of people that have not set clear and concise goals for their business as well as personal lives. Many people spend more time planning a vacation than they do planning their future.
Goal setting is the way we see into the future and determine where we are going. At the most simplistic level, we are unconsciously setting goals every day.
When the alarm clock goes off in the morning your goal is to get out of bed and get ready for the day. When you turn on the engine of your car, you are expecting to arrive at a pre-determined place. When you get on the elevator, your plan is to get off on a specific floor.
These are just some of the many unconscious goals we set for ourselves everyday. But do we take the time to consciously set strategic business and personal goals? Are these goals going to stretch you? Do they have benchmarks?
How much time does it take to set your goals for the coming year? Is it important to have a “roadmap” to help you determine where you are going and how you will get there? You can’t spend too much time setting goals.
Empirical evidence shows that we can accomplish more and go farther if we dedicate ourselves to written goals, keep them on our corporate and personal radar screens, and follow through on the steps required to make them happen.
Edwin Locke, a leading authority on goal setting, established this model of goal setting motivation:
- Goals give us focus: Distractions occur more easily without them.
- Goals get us going: They serve as beacons for our attention and they motivate us to act.
- Goals add to our resolve: Accomplishing what we want to do takes persistence. Without goals, we may find ourselves being persistent at low-priority activities.
- Goals lead to actions: Once a goal is set, a plan for action is the natural next step. Action plans outline the “how” of achieving or accomplishing goals.
Goals should be Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Results-oriented, and Time-sensitive. The SMART system for setting goals is a well-recognized way to put your goals in perspective. Goals must be specific; they must have benchmarks for measuring progress; while they should be a “stretch”, they need to be within one’s grasp; there must be a stated result;, and there must be a time-frame in which the goal must be accomplished.
If you or your company are not in the habit of setting SMART goals, well, maybe now is the time. Think about a specific accomplishment you want to achieve by December 31, 2010. Think about whether or not it is a realistic goal, how you intend to achieve it, what you need to set as benchmarks through the year to keep you on track, and what will be the result when you achieve this goal.
A goal is a dream with a deadline. It’s your way of looking into the future, envisioning where you want to be and setting a course to get there.
So, when you’re getting out of bed tomorrow, feel good about the fact that you’ve achieved your first goal of the day.
Is Your Team In Alignment? September 11, 2009
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A few years ago I noticed that the tires on my car were wearing very unevenly and when I inquired about it, I was told that they wouldn’t pass Pennsylvania State Inspection. I have the tires rotated on a regular basis, but that doesn’t accomplish anything if your front end is out of alignment. You would think the people doing the rotation would have noticed. As a result, I had to prematurely buy four new tires for the car and have the front wheels aligned.
As the car was being worked on, I thought about alignment as it applies to cars and to business. When an automobile is properly aligned, it gets better gas mileage, longer wear out of the tires, and it has a better, more enjoyable ride, just to name a few advantages.
So, how does alignment apply to business? In business, alignment means that you’ll stay on course with regard to goals and objectives, the business will have power to sustain itself, and its management group will be more stable.
If your wheels are out of alignment, the car could be pulling to one side or the other. In other words, it could be trying to go someplace that you don’t want to go. If the people who help you run your business are out of alignment with the vision and goals that you have set, then the business could be pulled in conflicting directions. The organization may not be meeting projections , and you may not know why.
Proper wheel alignment means that steering is smooth and the vehicle does not wander. It travels on the course to where the driver wants to go. Proper business alignment means that your “troops” are marching on course towards the point that you have set as the goal. Unfortunately it can be a lot more difficult to align your managers than to align your car. Just a few simple adjustments and your car is good to go. Your staff, on the other hand, might need a bit more of an adjustment.
This is a good time to check your company alignment as you begin to plan for next year, especially given current economic conditions. If an organization is not in alignment in this economy, it could face disastrous consequences. Find out what your people are thinking. Ask them what their vision of the future is for the company. Plan a day away from the office. Get them all in a room and have a free flowing discussion about the future of the company, with no restrictions on ideas.
It would be wise to have an outside facilitator so that the discussion doesn’t get “pushed” in one direction or another. Just remember that you are trying to get everyone on the same page with regard to the vision and goals of the company. A facilitator is the person with the objective point of view. He/she should have no agenda except to help the group achieve that goal.
The most important function for a leader in this situation is to listen to the ideas that are coming from his or her people. Treat every idea as a good one. The less judgmental the leader is, the less inhibited their managers will be. The good ideas will rise to the top and the team may be surprised from whom they come.
As you and your team go through this process, be sure that action items are assigned and milestones / deadlines are set up for accountability. This will help to keep everyone focused on their contribution to the whole.
It will take more than one meeting to determine the vision and focus of the company. Starting with a session in which everyone has input will help you to get the alignment you need from your managers. In this manner you will have created a level playing field for all to participate.
By the way, when was the last time you had the alignment checked on your car?
Are You Out Of Focus? July 31, 2009
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Are you one of those people who cannot focus on one task because there are too many tasks that seem to require your attention? Do you refer to yourself as a “multi-tasker”? Have you learned how to prioritize?
Many executives seem to have a tendency to make everything a priority to the point where nothing gets done or, at least, nothing gets done well. Where is it written that we must learn to do many things at once?
How would you feel if you learned that your car was built with the same lack of focus on priorities that some of us use to do our jobs? Scary thought, isn’t it?
Hall of Fame and Cy Young Award winning pitcher Steve Carlton knew about focus. Carlton’s concentration was so intense that he sometimes didn’t even see the batter, he has said. He focused on the catcher’s glove and the pitch that he was throwing, nothing else.
Did he have interruptions? Of course he did. Batters will step out of the batter’s box to “interrupt” the pitcher and opposing fans will try to create as much noise as possible. Carlton was still able to maintain his focus.
This is not to say that Steve Carlton didn’t have some bad days. After all, he’s human, too. And so are you, so a day here and there where it’s difficult to focus is a management challenge. It’s OK to give yourself some time to handle the “mindless” activities; the stuff you want to do but don’t have to do. Just be sure to get back on task.
We live in an age where everyone thinks they need to do many things at once. The dictionary defines multitasking as “ a computer doing more than one function at a time.” I have not found a definition of multitasking that refers to human beings. And yet, our culture has adopted this hi-tech term to explain what is becoming normal human behavior.
A study published in the American Psychological Association Journal describes research done by two University of Michigan Psychologists along with one from the Federal Aviation Administration. The researchers did four experiments with 108 young adult subjects, split among four groups, measuring speed of performance as a function of whether the successive tasks were familiar or unfamiliar, and whether the rules for accomplishing them were simple or complex.
The measurements revealed that the subjects lost time when they had to switch from one task to another, and time costs increased with the complexity of the tasks in every instance.
Switching from one task to another requires time to disengage the brain from the current task and engage it with the new one. Your way of thinking about each task changes along with the skills needed to perform the new task, thereby slowing down your ability to complete each task.
This process is both inefficient and counterproductive. However, if you focus on the priorities one at a time until they are complete or, you’ve achieved the goal which you set for that task for that specific day, you’ll be more efficient. As a result you’ll eliminate the stress that goes along with knowing that things aren’t getting done.
Try this to help you get started;
1. List your “priorities”
2. Schedule blocks of time to work on them, uninterrupted
3. Have a mind set that you can only do one at a time
4. Eliminate the ones that if you couldn’t do you wouldn’t or , heaven forbid, can be delegated to others, and stick to it
5. Take the remaining list and go through step two again
6. Look at the remaining list and determine what should be the absolute last thing you need to do
7. Continue doing that until you’ve worked your way up to what is now your number 1 priority
8. Focus on working on Number 1 and when you’ve completed what you need to do on that priority start with number 2 and so on
9. Schedule time for interruptions to return phone calls and to deal with E-mail
10. Ignore your Emails or, better yet, turn the monitor off until your schedule calls for it
Once you get into the habit of doing things this way it will become a way of life. So, your first priority is to focus on setting up your list of priorities!
