Goals Are Your Roadmap

Most businesses make a point to set goals/priorities at the beginning of the calendar year, and most end up as something like this:

We have too many things to do but they have to be done if we are going to grow.
If we shoot for the stars, maybe we’ll land on the moon.
Everything is important.

Once the very long list of goals are created, they are pulled out midway through the year for review or they go in a file and no one thinks of them again until the next year. Why does this happen?

I help my clients with their Annual Meeting where we set goals for the year, and sometimes longer. Just prior to their annual planning session, one of my clients forwarded a video from Franklin Covey regarding the “4 Disciplines of Execution”. Here are some interesting facts from the video:

Teams that focus on 2 or 3 goals usually achieve 2 or 3
Teams that focus on 5 to 10 goals usually achieve 1 to 2
Teams that focus on 11 to 20 goals usually achieve none

Why does this happen? Because the “day job” limits our time. If we don’t focus, we don’t get anything done. The reality is we are all caught up in the whirlwind known as our day job. If we take a realistic look at the whirlwind, we’ll realize we can’t focus on more than 2 to 3 goals. There just isn’t enough time.

The 4 Disciplines are as follows:

Focus on the Wildly Important (Wildly Important Goal – WIG). These are goals that are critically important. Failure to achieve these render all others inconsequential.

1. Limit these to very few
  1. Sub goals must support the very few “no matter what” goals.
  2. They must be defined with a clear starting line, finish line and deadline.

Act on the lead measures/metrics

1. The goal is the lag measure, we need to identify the “lead” measure we can leverage to meet the goal. For example: the goal is to lose weight (lag measure easy to quantify). The lead measures are diet and exercise. Measuring diet and exercise predicts success at weight loss. If you set the goal (lose weight) but don’t determine how you will achieve it (diet & exercise), you won’t reach your goal.

Keep a compelling scoreboard. The game always changes when the players know you are keeping score!

1. Must be simple and designed by the players.
  1. Visible to the players (why have it if the players can’t see it)
  2. Show a combination of lead and lag measures.
  3. Shows whether you are winning or losing.

Create a cadence of accountability

1. Weekly meetings that focus on your WIG

1. 1. Every week
  2. Same time
  3. Same agenda
  4. Report on last week’s commitments.
    1. Review the scorecard.
    2. Decide new to-do’s for next week.

If you want to stop making useless goals, contact me. You don’t need to set goals in January – any time of the year is a good time to start!

Goals Are Your Roadmap