To achieve a goal you must know what it is you are looking to accomplish.
Within the leadership role, you will constantly be looking to achieve results of your key performance indicators. I have found many times, a large portion of individuals in a leadership role are unfamiliar with how to begin setting and accomplishing goals and targets.
To Achieve a Goal, You Must First Get Granular!
What I have discovered is that we sometimes tend to outthink the methodology needed to find success. Sometimes we tend to focus on the overall goal but tend to ignore the steps needed to get us closer to that goal. For example, using a situation from our personal lives we are all able to relate to – weight loss.
If we want to lose weight – we cannot solely focus on weight loss. Following on this “big goal,” will not lead to success. We may step on the scale each and every day but without focus and execution of the driver of weight loss, we will not be successful. We need to identify what leads to weight loss. As we are all familiar with, nutrition and exercise lead to weight loss. If we reduce calories and increase exercise, chance are we will lose weight.
Our tactics then are to reduce caloric intake and increase exercise. We then come up with a plan that tells us how many calories we intake each day and how long we exercise for. If we follow these steps, measure progress of these steps daily and stick to our plan, we will lose weight.
In your career, with the goals you face, it is imperative to follow the same approach. Identify measures that will lead to the big goal and follow / measure them and communicate against them to see if the big goal is moving closer to target.
Identify The Drivers Of The Goal You Want To Achieve!
If you want to increase sales, identify two to three drivers that will lead to sales growth and come up with daily targets and execute against them. Do you need to make x amount of calls each day? Participate in x networking events a day? Recruit and train x amount of salespeople each week?
Work on the drivers of the “big goal” and you will start to see success. If for some reason, you are not impacting the big goal with your driver focus, you have learned the drivers are wrong. Identify new drivers and begin again. Continue this methodology until you see improvement with the big goal.
The lesson is if you are asked to accomplish X, that rarely is the driver or drivers you need to act upon. Identify the driver and you have unlocked the recipe to success. Stepping on the scale will not result in weight loss. Wishing for more sales will not result in a sales increase.
Now that you have a new outlook on the first step to goal setting, take some time to identify the two to three drivers you will need to act upon.
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