3 Easy Steps to Reach Your Goals in the New Year
Written by: Tony Varela
According to the U.S. News, 80% of New Year’s resolutions fail by the second week of February. Should we therefore not set goals if they are bound to fail? NO! It means we need to prepare ourselves to be a part of the 20% that succeed! Therefore, what can be done make sure you are in that extraordinary few that meet their goals?
Look at this surprising research around goal setting. According to Franklin Covey, those that set one to three goals end up achieving one to three goals. What about those that set four to ten goals? They only achieve one or two goals. Perhaps not surprisingly, those who set more than ten goals do not achieve any. The logic appears backward from what you may think.
What is the first step in assuring you meet or exceed your goals?
1. SIMPLIFY
That is right. When it comes to setting goals, selecting one, two, but no more than three critical goals to be laser-focused on will set you and your team up for success in truly achieving those goals.
One way to simplify is to forego the lengthy resolution and instead replace it with one word that captures what you are trying to achieve in the resolution. People have adopted this trend in recent years. Selecting a “word of the year” is a nice way to allow that word to provide a focus or guidance throughout the year. Melinda Gates has said that her word.
Famously, Melinda Gates has shared that she has been using this strategy for the past few years. Previous words she has chosen have been Gentle, or even Spacious to help her resist perfection and instead focus on completing critical tasks. In 2018, her word was Grace. She found that word helped her so much during difficult conversations at work, or to get through long days at the office, she chose it again through 2019.
In 2019, Meta Fab focused on Quality. Everything we did internally revolved around what we could do to help improve quality as an organization. Certainly, there were other daily tasks that differed from team to team but each team had a list of tasks that drove them back to improving the quality of our work and sending an excellent product to our customers. We got this idea after reading the book by Gary Keller, The 1 Thing. This book comes highly recommended.
If you think this strategy could work for you, what word will you choose?
2. HAVE A VISUAL SCOREBOARD
The second step is to make the goals visually available to everyone involved. By keeping the goals and the progress of the goals visual, this will keep the goal front-of-mind and improve the chances of reaching the goals. You can get creative with this and make banners, or put them on monitors throughout the office, but even if it is simply writing it on a whiteboard, that is a start! However, the more visual the better!
If you are able to update the visual indicator in real-time, or on a regular schedule it will be very helpful for the team to see where they are currently at in achieving the goal.
A successful goal we worked on recently on the shop floor that improved our On-Time Delivery was to add an electronic visual scheduling system (We used Kanban Tool with some customization to fit our needs better) that gives us a two-week outlook on all the jobs on the shop floor. Every morning key team members meet at the electronic scheduling (TV monitor) to go over what jobs are scheduled to ship that day, and what jobs will eventually ship later that week. They are able to see challenges that will prevent a job from shipping on time and make changes to the plan to meet shipping commitments.
If you think this strategy, could work for you, what word will you choose?
If you think this strategy could work for you, what word will you choose?
3. NOTING
This is really about being aware. Some might think of it as NOTICING but it is also simply taking a mental note of where you are at in the progress of the goal. Keep an eye on where you are going and the tasks needed to get you there. It is easy as a business owner, or manager, to become distracted with the many daily alarms or “fires” that arise. However, noting your progress, you are effectively creating a habit of keeping your goals present and at the forefront of your mind, even while all the other daily distractions bombard you.
In addition to noting, have someone close to you run accountability on the goal. This is more like a vocal note that you are sharing with someone. Make your check-ins with that person regularly scheduled, or when you note that you are slipping, give them a call.
That is it. 1. Simplify 2. Make It Visual 3. Take Notes
That is what Meta Fab will be using as we move into this new year with a newfound focus and determination to hit our aggressive goals. If you have some other ideas for nailing your goals, please find us on Facebook or LinkedIn and share your thoughts with us there.
Here is to a successful 2020!