Five Keys To Achieving Your Goals

FIVE KEYS TO ACHIEVING YOUR GOALS

by Pamela Millard

Plenty of things can distract you from your goals. It’s all about making sure your goals meet a few critical criteria: Engagement, Accountability, Measurement, Review, and Continuous Improvement. Building these five elements into your goals will give you a fast start to achieving them.

Engagement

Unless you are the only one on your team, you need help. This means it’s important that you get your team engaged in the process as well as in the goals. People do things for their own reasons – and your reasons aren’t necessarily their reasons. If you want your team actively and enthusiastically going after the goals you set, you need them engaged – in the goals and in the process. Here are some ways to ensure that your team members get on board with you.

Provide context. People need to understand goals as part of something bigger. The further team members are from the customer, the more this is critical—and more difficult to accomplish. Your team needs to understand your vision—the vision for the company. Strategic intent is one way to get people engaged.

• Get them involved. The more people are involved in the goal-setting process, the greater the likelihood of achieving the goals. Your employees will tell you, “I am more interested in achieving my goals than your goals.” So, to the extent possible, make your goals their goals. too.
• Be clear. Goals, and the actions to achieve them, need to be understood clearly. People need to understand what you want them to do – in specific terms. If they’re in doubt about what the expectations are, they will not be working as a team to fulfill the goals. They need to understand clearly what their individual role is in achieving the goal, why it’s important and – what’s in it for them.
• Be realistic. Goals need to align with each team member’s sense of logic and understanding of their world. . Goals need to be achievable. People can’t get behind goals that are impossible to achieve. However, realistic goals should also be challenging. If the goals are no better that what you’re doing now, then they’re not goals. The status quo does not engage people.
• Set priorities. Part of your reality check has to be understanding the priorities. If individuals or teams have too many priorities, then nothing is a priority. Beware of goals that seem to contract other goals. You don’t want team members thinking, “If I do this, I can’t also do that.”

Getting your team engaged means getting them involved, encouraged, and enthusiastic. The team must believe in the goals.

Accountability

Accountability is the missing ingredient in many plans. Goals do not achieve themselves. Who’s going to do what by when, how, and how will you monitor progress and results. Building the tactical implementation into your goals, helps ensure you can achieve them. Goals, and the objectives and action steps necessary to achievement them, need to be specific, time sensitive, and measurable.

What are the consequences for meeting or failing to meet the goal? Stephen Covey is quoted as saying “ Accountability breeds response-ability.” When you hold people, and yourself, accountable for outcomes and results, you’re encouraging them to accept responsibility. Delegation without accountability means abdication.

Measurement

There’s no accountability without measurement. What gets measured, gets managed – or more aptly here, what gets measured, gets done. Along with accountability, build the measurements right into your goals.

Include not just what you will measure but also how you will monitor progress. How, and how often? By when? It’s important to establish the method for measuring results, or progress against goals.

What will you measure? We’re all used to measuring results. Our industry is all about the money, whether you’re taking it in or paying it out. So we tend to think of results only in terms of Premiums, Revenues, Underwriting Profit, EBITDA, Expenses and Loss Ratios. Relevant results are definitely part of the goal set. However, you might have goals beyond the dollars in and out. Especially for teams or units that are not on the front lines, goals might be service oriented or delivery oriented. They might be behavioral. They might involve training and development. So, when you think of measuring goals think broadly about what you’re trying to achieve.

Review

Don’t overlook the importance of Follow-up. Build the review process into the goal and then follow up and follow through. This is how you demonstrate your commitment to the goals and ensure that everyone is working on the right priorities. This is where you hold yourself accountable.

Continuous improvement

Your business is not static and neither are your goals .A frequent complaint of planning and goal setting is the fact that it seems to be a waste of time when things change. Often, when things do change and the goal becomes unattainable, or irrelevant, there is a tendency just to dump the whole plan. Goals are not cast in stone. To ensure success, build your goals with the anticipation that there will be change – continuous improvement.

Think of continuous improvement as just part of the process. Measure progress and if you’re not getting just what you want – or what you expected – adjust the action plans, or the priorities or, less commonly, the goals. You measure again. If you need to make bigger changes, make them. However, usually, when goals are not being met, it isn’t the goal that needs to change, it is the actions taken to achieve it.

Take your goals to the next level.

• Engage Your Team
• Make sure they can see the bigger picture.
• Make sure they know what’s expected of them – and what’s in it for them
• Engage Your Team
• Make sure they can see the bigger picture.
• Make sure they know what’s expected of them – and what’s in it for them
• Build in Accountability
• Make sure everyone knows – and is committed to WHO is going to do WHAT by WHEN, HOW, and HOW WILL YOU MEASURE IT
• Follow Up and Follow Through
• Don’t wait until the end of the year to see how you’re doing
• Don’t assume that things are being done according to plan. Check on it!
• Expect Change
• Expect to make changes – perhaps to your goals – but certainly to the actions and the methods to achieve them.

Many plans fail because they address too many issues. Concentrate your efforts on the most important issues, those items that are imperative to fulfilling the vision of your business. Identify which things must be done well, or those that set you apart from the competition, and start with them.

Pamela Millard is president of Transformation Advisors (Diamond Springs, CA), a client-focused management consulting firm. You can contact her at (530) 295-108, e-mail [email protected]; or www.transformationadvisors.com.