Every written thing about goals has to do with achieving them. Stating them brings us clarity. The theory is that there is certainty of achievement by stating them and then focusing on them.
Literature also states that a plan never survives intact when it is implemented. This thinking is common in business literature. The competition, the environment, the people, or the resources always get in the way somehow.
Goals are a lot like a plan. We can easily get confused by them when we focus only on the final result. I have found that there are many different roads to get almost anywhere.
To get to a goal you need to break it down further into 2 or 3 significant pieces that “all need to happen” in order for the goal to be reached. If I want to lose weight, there is a food component and an exercise component that I must focus on separately in order to achieve this stated goal.
In business, to reach a stated net income level, we need to focus on our expenses (how much we spend each day), our margin (how much profit we can make on a sale) and also on how many sales we can achieve in a day, week or month.
Remember the wheel and how you need the so much more to move in a direction (an earlier post “Three parts needed not one”). The same holds true for our goals.
Focus on the goal or end result only and your chance of getting there is severely reduced. There is no clarity in stating the goal itself in how to get there. It simply describes an endpoint or a destination with no road map. It’s the equivalent of a dream.
Identify the two or three big things that will help you reach your stated goal and focus on achieving a smaller goal for each of the big things and your chance of realizing your stated goal just improved tremendously.
You don’t need a product or thing to try this with. It will work with almost anything. It gives you a chance to decide what is needed to reach your goal. Goals really “never happen” by themselves.
This approach causes us to slow down and think more about what we want to accomplish. Not a bad thing to do given we really are not that “perfect”.
It also reminds us that things usually take longer than we like. No matter what our stated goal. Wouldn’t you agree?
(Oops, I forgot to say that you most likely will need a “plan B” because sometimes things do not work out as we planned. No matter if it is a big or smaller related goal.)