Goal Setting Made Simple
All the Goals, All the Time
Business owners set goals – monthly, quarterly, yearly goals – and they achieve their goals, right?
Everything gets checked – done!
Well…
If you’re like most businesses, including ours, you don’t check off all your goals every month, quarter or year. Maybe, the same goal showed up on the list three quarters in a row. Did you start to think the goal was impossible to achieve? In spite of that, we think business owners do not set enough goals.
Think about your goals – look at your list. What are your goals? How will you achieve them? The How – that’s where the magic is. When you set big goals, those long-term strategic time and money-sucking goals, you have to break them down into smaller steps. It’s the old “How do you eat an elephant” question. Of course, the answer is “One bite at a time!”
Break it Down
At Growth Simplified, we always say to figure out how you’ll manage it all the way through. Here is an example:
Break the goal down into, say, 12 smaller goals. That way you can focus on each bit, day by day, week by week. It is much more realistic and sets a clear path for what you must accomplish to cross the finish line.
Most companies skip this step in the planning process because it takes extra time, adding to managers’ already full schedules. However, this detailed almost obsessive planning will get you where you want – and need – to go in increasing profits.
Don’t Underestimate Yourself
The second most important step that leaders often skip is setting their goals high enough. Bill Gates said (paraphrased): People grossly overestimate what they can accomplish in a short period of time and grossly underestimate what they can accomplish over the course of a year.
Isn’t that something? Think about this – if you improve by just one percent every day, that’s a monumental change over a year. Why don’t people do it more often? They don’t know where to start, so here’s our advice:
Set a
stretch goal at the beginning of each week.
What’s one thing you could accomplish in your role, your department,
your business or your life that would bring you substantially closer to your overall
“big” goal? After you decide what goal to attack this
week, break it down into steps you can chip away at every day.
Suddenly, you are climbing the steps and hitting those milestones. Every day you score a WIN! After a week or at the end of the month or quarter, you’ve exceeded your own expectations. It feels great!
Charge the Goal Line
Some humans tend to work hard until they have the goal line in sight, but then as they approach it, they ease up a little. Think about driving a car, you take your foot off the gas pedal as you approach the stop sign and coast a bit before applying the brake. The car stops just at the crosswalk, exactly where it should. If your sales goal this month is $100,000, you work hard to get to $85,000 then enjoy the euphoria as you coast to the goal. But you don’t exceed the goal because you’ve done well enough.
Now, think about the Olympian track runner – when he or she gets close to the finish line, they speed up! At exactly the last second, they lean into the tape and blast over the line. They don’t stop running until after they’ve achieved their goal.
OK, we don’t recommend doing that at the stop sign, but realistically, what if the goal was $200,000? The goal is double what you think you can do – and you’ll think very carefully about the steps you’ll take to get there. Even if you miss the $200,000 target your chances of hitting $100,000 are much better. Heck, hitting $150,000 would be pretty good!
Try this in your business today – set ambitious and audacious goals – plan your steps. Get there by setting out specific, incremental daily goals. You will be amazed. Leaders will be impressed.
To learn more, visit us today at: Growth Simplified – Conversations That Drive Faster Buying Decisions (gsimplified.com)