7
Determining Goals
WE FIRST MUST determine and define our Core Values. We then must ensure that we do everything possible as leaders to hire talented people who share those Core Values. Next, we must recognize that we all perform best within a structure. Goals and standards provide this, and we need both. Goals are performance-based (e.g., summiting a mountain, making a certain revenue number for the quarter, achieving a particular G.P.A., or winning the turnover battle). Failure to achieve a goal merely results in an opportunity to reattack that objective tomorrow. Countless books have been written about goals and how to determine what they should be. George Doran’s S.M.A.R.T. system for determining them has been in existence since 1981 and continues to make sense, regardless of the battlefield. Goals should be Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Timely. In helping us to achieve our S.M.A.R.T. goals, The Program believes that, as with Core Values, the fewer, the better. If we can’t remember what our goals are, how important are they? Second, write goals down, hang them in a prominent place, and tell everyone about them. If we don’t have the conviction to do this, chances are slim that we will ever achieve them. Peer pressure is not always a bad thing. Those with great personal accountability and discipline may not need to tell others their goals in order to achieve them, but many of us don’t possess these attributes. Third, ensure that short-term goals are in alignment with long-term ones. Anything that we do now should help with what we want to accomplish in the future. If we are consistently accomplishing our short-term goals, but it does not lead to the achievement of our long-term ones, we must change them. For example, if our consistently achieving a short-term goal of fifty cold calls per day is not leading to our consistently achieving our long-term goal of $1,000,000 in sales, we must either increase the number of cold calls or change our short-term goal to, say, ten great prospect conversations. Goals, unlike our Core Values, can and should change. Fourth, we must hold ourselves and the team accountable to achieving them. If we aren’t achieving our goals, figure out why not and reattack them. If we are achieving them, celebrate them, set higher ones, and attack those. Finally, standards reinforce our Core Values. They are the daily behaviors that we hold ourselves and our teammates accountable to meeting while accomplishing our goals. Standards and goals share a symbiotic relationship. For any single season or fiscal year, we might not meet our standards, or embody our Core Values, but still accomplish our goals. This typically occurs when we have a very talented team whom we don’t necessarily “like,” or even enjoy spending time with, even though in the short term we are “winning.” A strong culture, defined by our Core Values that all members of the team embody, and reinforced by standards that we consistently meet, allows us to consistently meet our goals, not just in the short term, but every term. Doing so then invariably increases the size of the talent pool of individuals who want to be part of our organization—everyone wants to be with a winner. Achieving our goals gives us an even greater opportunity to recruit and hire even more talented individuals who also already share our Core Values. Ensure that they do so. “What are you going to do with your life? What do you want to accomplish?” We are commonly asked this by our own parents and have asked our own children. It’s an unfair question. Figuring out what we want to be successful doing may be as difficult as being successful doing it! However, not knowing what we want to accomplish in our life should not be an excuse for accomplishing nothing this week. “I/we set a goal that I/we thought was going to be challenging, but attainable. As it turns out, we are going to crush it. Should I change it?” Or “I/we set a goal that I/we thought was going to be challenging, but attainable. As it turns out, we are going to get crushed by it. Should I change it?” The answer is yes in either case, but the timing of when to do so is very different. In the first scenario, a leader can and should change the goal, but only after first recognizing the accomplishment of achieving what the team originally set out to do. You can change the goal prior to achieving it, but recognize its accomplishment when it is reached even if a new goal has already been set. If not, the attitude of “nothing is ever good enough” will quickly set in, which can lead to burnout and the “best” people leaving the team. None of us like to fail in attaining our goals. However, if we are always achieving our goals, we should be setting higher ones. If we are setting S.M.A.R.T. goals, though, we will fall short occasionally and when we do, we figure out why we failed as a team, communicate those reasons, reset, and continue to attack it. A common refrain, and worry, shared by both coaches and business leaders is that if they set goals too high and their team is at a point in the season or fiscal year when they know they aren’t going to reach them, then the team or certain individuals might quit. If this is the case with your team, then get rid of the team or those certain individuals on the team as quickly as possible. As a leader, there is nothing you can do about quitters except get rid of them. They are a cancer and will affect the rest of your organization if they have the influence to do so. Someone who stops trying when faced with adversity, when things don’t “go their way,” is the definition of a bad teammate, regardless of talent.Action Items on Goals
Saved Round on Goals: When Do I Change Goals?
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