Archives for April 2010

Have you sat behind the steering wheel without knowing where you are going? Sounds bizarre, right? What is more bizarre is that we do this every day in our professional lives without finding it disturbing! If you are smart (which I am sure you are and that is why you are reading this blog!), then you would have figured out that we are talking about GOALS which are important when we leave the house as well as when we go ahead in our personal, professional and business lives.

In fact, my take on this is that having a goal makes life easier by giving us a direction and sense of purpose. If you want to be successful, then one of the things which you need to do is set goals in everything you do.

So how do you SET goals?

Goals are usually things which we want to achieve in life. Personally, you might have a goal to lose weight, professionally it can be to increase turnover, employee productivity, customer satisfaction etc. Once you have a broad goal…you pretty much have a direction which then needs to be broken down into activities.

How do you DOCUMENT a goal?

You can have long term or short term goals and their categorization is dependent on the time frame it will take to achieve them. For example, you can give yourself two months to lose four pounds or twelve months to increase customer satisfaction. Once you categorize this, you need to backtrack a bit and break it down into activities which will lead you to the goal.

For example, activities to reach a place usually involve, starting the car, checking the route, driving, parking, etc. Similarly, you need to document steps which will help you get to this goal.

After documentation comes EXECUTION

This is actually the most difficult part of achieving your goal….you can only get it right if you execute the various steps correctly. This is the place where the difference between KNOWING and DOING can be understood well. Good planning makes it easy to reach a goal. Each step should be understood properly as that will influence till the overall quality of the goal you finally achieve. For example, well planned campaign for higher customer satisfaction is likely to get you close to 80% of your goal.

A goal is only as good as its metrics!

Metrics are nothing but numbers which can help you measure your goals and are as important as setting a goal in the first place. I have to lose weight is a meaningless goal if you don’t tie it with a number. Similarly, a goal to increase sales numbers is unlikely to be of any point if you don’t attach a number to it…let’s say a 30% increase from current levels. In fact, it is only with metrics that it makes sense to have goals in the first place.