https://youtu.be/56hOP6OyRT4

Hello, and welcome to the Jameson Files. I'm Carrie Webber and I'm your host. And I'm so glad to have you joining me once again, for another episode of the Jameson Files podcast. Now you may come across this live on the Jameson Facebook page. If so, welcome. We send out our podcast initially via live stream on the Jameson Facebook page, every other Wednesday at 11:30 AM central. I want to invite you if you haven't already done so to connect with us through the areas that you listen to podcasts, whether that's iTunes, Google Play, or Spotify, and become a part of our Jameson Files podcast community. We'd love to have you following along and learning and growing with us. So as this podcast goes live this episode, we are in January 2021. 

Now as business leaders and business owners, you may find yourself on the regular spending time in the first of the year, or nearing the end of a year, strategically planning for the year ahead, setting goals and wanting to build upon either successes you've had or lessons that you've learned in the previous year.

How to Set Goals for the Year Ahead

Now we are coming out of a most extraordinary year and it may be easy to continue on the path of recovery, or you may find it very challenging. How do I set goals in the year to come, and how am I to be successful in the pursuit and achievement of those goals? I often think about goal setting. It's a very common topic in podcasts, blog articles, and books. And if you Google “goal setting,” you can find a plethora of insights and information on how to do it successfully. But for this podcast, I studied reflecting on what has historically gotten in my way personally, or what I hear from other practice leaders, other dentists, other business owners that I work with, or I try to help what gets in their way and how can we overcome those and really shift our perspective to be more successful this year as we plan for the future.

So some things that I've struggled with over the years, or that I have had conversations with doctors or practice leaders over the years about are some areas that really impede goal setting, goal accomplishment, and making progress on your overall vision for your business and, and your efforts and making strategy to move forward.

Obstacles in Goal Setting

1. Inconsistency

Of those thoughts, I came up with four areas that are really those obstacles that seem to stop us making progress in goal setting and goal accomplishment and strategic planning. The first one is inconsistency. We all have experienced this either personally, when we try to set new year's resolutions or goals for ourselves, with our health, with our family, with our professional lives. But also inconsistency as a business in setting clear and attainable goals with our teams and achieving those goals on the regular, we may start strong, but somewhere along the way either in the busy-ness of our day-to-day lives or we maybe didn't meet a goal and in frustration and how difficult it proved to be, we become inconsistent in making this a healthy habit for our business lives for our professional lives.

James Clear wrote a brilliant book called Atomic Habits. And when I read this book, I felt it really hit the nail on the head and what causes us in a variety of ways to be inconsistent in our achievement and pursuit of goals and healthy, strategic planning. And it's really about the mindset we bring to the table, the commitment we make to whatever it is we're striving to achieve. Clear talks about how to achieve the great goals you may have for your life. It takes the building of small disciplines along the way. So the moment we embrace goal setting as a discipline and commit to its key purpose—that's the moment we can take all the things running in our head to build and improve upon this year and make them happen in the year to come.

If we want that moment, we have to take action, and goal setting and strategic planning is truly the best action planning. And so taking that and embracing that and making that inconsistent process into a consistent habit is the big change that we may want to focus on and improve in the year to come. That may be your one takeaway,.

2. Lack of Clarity

Lack of clarity is another big one. I've worked with a lot of doctors and leaders that have tried setting goals from time to time and doing it consistently. But more often than not when I ask, "Okay, so you met the first goal. What's next?" they don't know what goals to write for themselves. They haven't taken the time first to get clear on what their ideal vision is. If we're putting the cart before the horse and setting goals just for the sake of setting them, there will not be much motivation to drive those efforts forward.

We have to get clear on what our ideal vision for the year ahead is. If you were to find yourself in January 2022, what do you hope to see in terms of your day-to-day professional life? What's different? What's new? What's changed? What's stayed the same? What have you invested in? What have you brought to the table? And when you envision it and paint the picture of what ideal is, then you can roll it back to January 2021 and determine what is the first step I need to take to get me going toward that ideal vision for my practice in the year to come.

3. Uncertainty

That lack of clarity also marries with what I think the third one is. And that is uncertainty. Not really knowing. We may know what we want our practice to be looking like and how we want our team to be performing and the sort of dentistry we want to do, or whatever the case may be, but we still are uncertain on what steps we need to take, because we're getting overwhelmed in the big picture.

We have to look at it from the tiniest, most simplistic slivers. So once you get clear on what that big picture is, we have to get clear on what the next step can be. So we don't get so overwhelmed. We become paralyzed and nothing gets done in any meeting you have in any planning session you do, whether it's on your own or with team members. Don't leave one session without having a plan in place of what's next. What is the next step? And we'll talk in a moment about those goal-setting steps that will help you gain more certainty on what you can do to take the first step and then the next step. And then the next step toward your goals.

4. The Unexpected

The fourth area is the unexpected. We have great intentions in January of doing a lot of great things of conquering the world, so to speak. And then the unexpected throws left hooks and right hooks towards us. I think 2020 reflected the most extreme versions of coming across the unexpected. And we can never fully prepare for what we don't know is coming our way, but if we have more clarity and more processes and systems in place, and we have embraced the consistency of planning appropriately and effectively setting goals and action plans with our teams and for ourselves, we can overcome whatever is unexpected and adjust course so that we continue in the right direction. We may slow down. We may have to take the long way. But the vision is still the same. And that is what we have to become more comfortable and confident in—that through consistency and clarity, we will have more certainty on what's the next best step. And we will get through the unexpected in a more prepared and focused way.

Now, as I talk about changing course, it makes me think a lot. I'm a little fascinated right now with sea navigation. I am not a sea person. I do not sail. I do not own a boat. But I've been doing work with some clients that are lovers of the sea and of sailing. And so we use those metaphors in a lot of our work together to help paint a picture in a way that's most meaningful to them. And it sparked a curiosity for me. When you're sailing or when you're the captain of a ship and you're planning your journey, what steps do you need to make? And it made me think about planning your course. So, in today's episode, it's all about plotting your course for the year to come, like sea navigation.

Plot Your Course Before You Set Sail

The journey always starts with the, the captains of the ship plotting the course toward their destination. Now, of course, in today's world, technology has advanced that you have GPS and all these great tools to help you at sea. But it takes a lot of traditional steps too. In case you have technological issues while you're at sea, you still want to have a plotted course. And so when you look this up, how to plot a course in sea navigation, a lot of information comes at you. And some things that really stood out for me blend well with business in terms of strategic planning, setting goals. It's very similar to plotting your course.

1. Ultimate Destination

Number one is drawing your direct preferred course from the start through to your ultimate destination. That's what we're talking about—setting a vision and plotting a course of direction. If everything went perfectly, what is your direct route to your ideal vision for your practice in 2021? We want to make sure we have clarity. We have answered questions that are important for us to determine our ideal vision, and we have paired that with our team. So do you have a clear vision of what right looks like for your practice—from the type of dentistry you provide, your reputation in the community, how people are finding you, what your team is like and how they're performing, how much time off you have, what kind of technology you've invested in—all of that clarity? Once you also share that with your team, it gets you in alignment and focused on your daring destination. And that's what we want to do, create a clear, direct path all the way through your destination from start to finish so that you have a way forward and everyone has a map to follow.

2. Timing and Tides