Fear Factor: I don’t know how to set a goal, so I will just set none….
One of the quickest and easiest ways to doom yourself or your business is to follow the above advice. I constantly talk to people that refuse to set goals for several reasons:
There are many more reasons, but these are some of my favorites. All of them are real issues. All of them are hard to overcome. All of them just need a little push.
The ‘ignorance is bliss’ person has either never been taught or refuses to remember and utilize good goal setting strategies. The low hanging fruit for this person is to start with the tried and true SMART goal system. Specific, Measurable, Action Oriented (or achievable depending on your school), Realistic and Timed. Many have heard this system, many don’t really understand how to use it. In fact, it is difficult to use on yourself sometimes. It is much easier for someone else to look at your ‘goal’ and tell you whether it is truly specific for instance. How will you know you have without a doubt achieved your goal? ‘I want to grow my business’ is not a goal. That is a wish. ‘I want to grow my business by 50% in revenue in the following 6 months’ is a goal. The first example lacks specificity. There is all kinds of room for interpretation of accomplishment.
Are you saying you want to grow the office space? The overhead? The social media footprint? All of those are easy to grow and don’t necessarily help you grow your income. People confuse activity with accomplishment way too often. The second example is very specific on what will happen and when it will happen. It is highly measurable and for the purposes of this discussion, we will assume it is realistic and achievable. To make it action oriented, you drill down a bit to something like this: ‘I want to grow my business by 50% in the next 6 months by calling every past customer in my database over that time at a rate of 20 per week.’ This is truly an action oriented goal. A less business oriented version is the classic ‘I want to lose weight’ vs ‘I want to lose 10 pounds over the next 3 months by going to the gym at least 3 times per week (Mon, Wed, Sat) and limiting my caloric intake to 2000 calories per day.’ Huge difference in potential for success. Now write it down and post it somewhere you will see it multiple times per day. Tell people in your inner circle about your goal so they can help monitor you. Success rates if you do these things will be astronomical.
But I have set goals in the past and not achieved them! The underachiever would rather accomplish nothing or at best much less than their potential rather than fall short of the big prize. ‘My goal was to double my business in 1 year. I could only achieve 80% of that so I am not setting such an aggressive goal anymore.’ Anyone else see the issue with this? My business grew at a very quick pace because I set a goal that was aggressive vs setting an easily attainable one. Challenge yourself. Set goals that make you get a lump in your throat. Push yourself to go beyond where most think you can. It is the only way to get beyond the proverbial hamster wheel you are on. If you don’t make it all the way, celebrate how far you did and reload for another run at it. Things will happen that push your ship off course. Don’t drop anchor and sit still because of it.
If you do stop, you will become the passenger. Just along for the ride. You will become a victim of circumstance, market, employees, friends, God, or life in general. Control will always be in someone else’s hands and therefore you will always be able to blame them when things don’t go your way. Too many people go through life like this. It is really a sad observation on the direction of our world. We do it with our companies, our families and the rest of our lives. Well many of us do. Some people look at everything that happens as a learning experience. We learn when we win, we learn when we lose, but we always learn. In goal setting, sometimes in order to push ourselves out of our comfort zone and off of the hamster wheel, we have to set a goal that is well beyond anything we have really pondered. I love to do an exercise with people on this very subject.
I ask, ”How much do you want to make this year?” No matter the answer I say, ”Double it…Double it again…Double it again…” Until I see them squirm, the answers are too easily attainable.
I want people to realize untapped potential, not just push a little harder to achieve moderate success. In order for that breakthrough, you have to be a little uncomfortable. I would rather set a goal at 100 and hit 95 than set it at 30 and hit 40. The celebration of exceeding my easy goal vs nearly achieving a huge mark would be meaningless.
So how are your goals coming along this year? Have you already forgotten your ‘resolutions’? Do you have goals set for the next 11months? How about where you want to be in 60 months? One of my favorite quotes is ‘people aim at nothing and achieve it with astounding accuracy. I hope you have some big plans for the coming year. I wish you all of the success you ever dreamed of. And if you are having trouble deciding what success really looks like or how to get there, or even if you just need someone to help push you over the top, I would love to help. The results you want are out there, let me help you find them…