Set goals and achieve them
I have often discussed goal setting and why it is so important. Writing down your goals on paper (whether personal or professional) increases your chances of achieving them. This is actually one of the reasons why most New Year’s Resolutions never come to fruition: they are never written. Without putting pen to paper, your goals are really just wishes. But once you verbalize your goals and create a clear plan to achieve them, they move from the mess of brilliant ideas and wishful thinking to the realm of the possible.
What do you do if you want to take a fantastic vacation? You plan your trip. First, you decide where to go. You are located at point A and you want to travel to point B. That is your goal. Now how do you do it? Maybe you’d like to rent a car and driver so you can kick back and read up for the 1,000-mile drive. But as he works on his plans, he realizes that driving would not be profitable or profitable. So he tweaks his plan, researching airline and rail fares and schedules to continue moving in one direction toward his original goal: success.
The example may be simplistic, but it shows how goal setting and planning should become at least part of your weekly exercise. If your goal is to sell 10,000 widgets in the third quarter, what is your plan to reach that goal? Have you intensified your marketing program to generate more leads? Are you going to offer a combo pack to generate more sales? If you don’t write it all down, will you keep working to make your mark? Probably not. And if you don’t write it down, along with a plan to achieve your goal, how will you know if your time and money are being well spent? You will have no idea how to measure the return on your investment.
Are you committed to really pushing the envelope and achieving things that may seem difficult to achieve? I challenge you to go for it. Now is not the time to sit back and wait for something great to happen. You must take charge, so to speak, and propel your company forward in positive motion with all your wisdom, energy, creativity, and experience. Remember, goals don’t necessarily have to be tied to a specific dollar number. They can be as simple as writing three blogs a week or reading one educational article a day. You may have a lot of mini-goals that really help you achieve a larger overall goal. However, regardless of the size or impact, keep these few things in mind to achieve any goal you set for yourself.
– Commit your goal to paper. Whether you write those goals down on paper, record them on a spreadsheet, or enter your ideas on your smartphone, engaging your goals in the written word is the first step to achieving them. Also remember that you can have short-term and long-term goals. What do you plan to accomplish in the next three months? Six months? Five years? Ten years? Make a wish and turn it into a goal by writing it down.
– Make your goals visible. After you have them down on paper, post your goals where you can see them daily. If you wrote them down to a file on your computer or Blackberry, print them out or, better yet, scan them and make them your screen saver. The more you remember what you have set your sights on, the greater the opportunities you will have to work towards and achieve them.
– Create realistic and measurable goals. I want to lose weight is not a goal. It is a hope and a dream. I want to lose 10 pounds by June 1 is a goal. You have a definable element that can be easily measured (either you step on the scale June 1 and have lost 10 pounds or you haven’t) and you have a deadline to meet that goal.
– Create a plan to achieve the goal. Obviously, you’re not going to write down your goals and then wait for them to be met. You must create logical steps that will successfully get you from point A to point B. It sounds simple enough, but keep an open mind as you create these strategies. What if, three weeks into your plan, your provider runs out of widgets and you won’t even have 10,000 to deliver even if you get the orders? Consider what you might do if a new state-of-the-art widget suddenly became available that was clearly better than the one you planned to sell. Would you continue to sell the original, or would you review your goals and adjust accordingly? Stay on task, but be flexible to adapt to changing situations. Allow yourself to make changes along the way, as long as those changes still contribute to the original end result.
The hardest part of setting and then achieving goals is remembering to set those goals in the first place. We get so caught up in the daily operations of our businesses and obsessed with our “to do” lists, that we forget to sit back and look at the big picture. Actually, if your “to do” list is full of tactics that will help you achieve your goal, then by all means, keep moving down that list. However, if you find yourself just going through the steps and completing the heavy lifting, then it’s time to take a step back and review what your goals really are.