608: The importance of goals and how to track them

It’s October! As crazy as that sounds. And I’m curious…when was the last time you looked at the goals you set at the beginning of the year? Have you looked at them yet? Or are they collecting dust somewhere, or worse…did you even write them down? Let’s talk a bit about that today. Thomas Joyner with Business on Purpose here. Thanks so much for joining today. I was sitting in a coaching meeting with some clients the other day and they were a bit dejected. Felt like they were stuck. “We’re not making any progress!” they said. “We’ve been trying to move forward on just keep fighting the same battles.” “Well, let’s look at that.” Here’s the best part. At BoP we do 12 week goals…small bite sized 12 week plans to keep the business moving forward. Instead of spinning your wheels for a year or more, you can stay on course and refocus every 12 weeks. So, we pulled up their 12 week plan. We had 3 goals written down with a minimum of 10 action steps to accomplish each. As we walked down their list of goals, they realized they had made tons of progress! They were over 50% there for each of their goals! They just had to refocus, realize that they were not, in fact, stuck, and recommit to the action items they had written down. They left the office the other day realizing that they were doing the things that mattered. They were held accountable to a plan and were able to continue checking things off as they moved towards 3 goals that would transform their business by the end of the year. So, back to you. What goals did you write down? Where are they? How do you track them? Have you tracked them this year? If not, why not? Recent research suggests that most goals are abandoned less than 25 days into being set. 25 days!!! I think we have to ask ourselves why. The first reason is we give ourselves too much time to accomplish the goals. I don’t know if you remember being in school and being assigned a semester paper. Are you starting that thing week one? Heck no! It’s so far off I have plenty of time to get to that. So you put it on the shelf until it’s pressing. It collects dust until you realize it becomes urgent! Don’t lie and act like you were one of the gold medal students that finished your stuff months ahead, we know the truth! But how about when you were given a big assignment that was due by the end of the week. You get going on it now! It’s urgent. To get it finished it can’t sit on the shelf, but has to move forward step by step until it’s done on time. Goals are no different. We give ourselves too much time to get the work done and either forget about it or put it off until it becomes urgent. That’s why we use 12 week plans. It keeps goals constantly in front of us so we never cease to move the ball down the field. The second reason is that some goals need to be broken down into smaller goals. Doubling sales is difficult! And can feel overwhelming, so why not figure out some intermediate goals and metrics to incrementally push towards that. Instead of making one giant leap. Set goals that help you move towards the one big goal. Lastly, I think we don’t look at them practically enough. We write these big goals down and don’t write out the action steps. We don’t give ourselves some easy wins to get momentum. As a result we fail or cease to get moving. Give yourself some action items that can contribute to your goals. Just make a list. What helps me accomplish this. A minimum of ten steps or action items. Set up time to critically think about it and strategize. Then just set some work time to make it happen. Then, set up a time to audit the work. For my clients, we do this every two weeks at our coaching meetings. Intentional time set aside to make sure we’re making progress. And here’s the secret. It works! It’s not a magic wand, but intentional time set aside to work on goals works! Who knew? So, if you’re in the group that hasn’t checked out your goals since January…no shame! Pull them off the shelf, break them up into bite sized chunks, and make a plan move forward. And if you need help with accountability, reach out! We’d love to help you stay focused and accomplish your mission as a business. Thanks so much! Have a great day.