Effective Strategies E-Zine

Volume 1, Issue 3

Use the Goal Worksheet. Click here to download a tool that will help you set your goals.

“The greater danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we miss it, but that it is too low and we reach it.”

Michelangelo Buonarroti
1474-1564
Italian Renaissance Painter and Sculptor

“Achievable goals are for sissies.”

Carrie Smith
1965-Present
Goal Junkie

Goal-Setting Tool

Click here to download the worksheet to make your goal-setting easier.

 

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Effective Strategies is devoted to sharing ideas that can improve your business performance. This issue, we look at goal-setting strategies of extraordinary people. If you missed the last issue, click here to read it.

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Reader Ideas Welcome

Do you have a great small business management idea you’d like to share with our readers? Send it on! Specific questions and topic ideas are also welcome. Share your ideas via e-mail at carrie@soarhigher.com.

 

Set Kick-Butt Goals

Ask anyone that you know that produces great results and you will find a common thread in the fabric of their success — the ability to set and meet goals. As I’ve seen in my life with amazing frequency, goals are miracles simply waiting to happen. Here are key elements to use in your goal-setting strategy.

Define your purpose. Start by considering what your purpose on earth is. Once you know why you’re here, write goals that support that. Success is the casualty caused by professional or personal goals that don’t line up. For example, a father may believe that his purpose is to be a parent who actively participates in his children’s school activities. Both personal and professional goals must support that purpose. If his professional goals include advancing into a position that requires extensive travel, he’ll find it difficult to achieve all his goals.

Understand your values and personal mission. Make a list of those things are important to you and the maintenance of a healthy lifestyle. Write a mission statement that describes what you feel called to do with the precious time you’ve been given on earth. Goal-setters can get caught up in their long-term goals but fail to take advantage of today. Every single day is a gift and we must focus on those things that line up with our personal values and mission.

Ray Pelletier, the late certified speaking professional and master consultant, recommends writing a mission statement for every task you take on right down to individual business calls. Simply put, he wrote down his goal for each task so that he met his objective.

Write goals for both personal and professional areas of your life. Professional goals may include job promotion or change, training, or productivity. If you own a business, you’ll want to look at marketing, productivity, growth, or product development goals. Personal goals may include fitness, family, education, and financial goals. Many people fail in life because they don’t set goals that relate to their family life. Who you are in your personal life is vitally important because it creates the foundation for who you are as a professional. One of the most important legacies we leave is how we live our personal lives.

While you want to focus the destination (or “begin with the end in mind” as Stephen Covey suggests in Seven Habits of Highly Effective People), goals are really more about attaining the right tools and preparing for the journey. It’s more difficult to make a trip to somewhere you’ve never been without a map or transportation.

Use the right words. Use action verbs — lots of them.

Include components that ensure success. Use the SMART model for structuring your goals. Make them Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Time-bound to a deadline. Tony Robbins, motivational speaker and business coach, says we need to have an RPM Plan: Know the RESULT you want, know your PURPOSE, and compose a MASSIVE ACTION plan.

Find an accountability partner. You probably have a long list of people who would gladly stand in line to hold you accountable. Sharing your goals with other people means that they can ask you about your progress occasionally so they can encourage you. You also feel like you let them down if you haven’t made progress when they check in with you.

Write a variety of goals. Write some long-term goals (three to five years), mid-range goals (one to three years), and short-term goals (one year or less). Break this year’s goals down by quarters. Often, your short-term goals are steps to achieving your long-term goals.

Keep the number of goals realistic. Try to limit yourself to three to five goals in each category. Having too many goals dilutes your focus.

Push beyond what you believe is achievable. Be willing to fail. You don’t meet goals that you don’t set. If you set a goal at 200% of what you believe is achievable, are you a failure if you only make 120% of the achievable goal? Of course not — you’re extraordinary! Beside, achievable goals are for sissies and you are definitely not a sissy.

Keep your goals out in front of you. Put them on your closet door or in other location that you visit at least once a day. If you are responsible for a company or organization, make sure you keep those goals in front of the whole organization. One of the most common reason goals are not achieved is that they are put in a nice notebook and filed away on a shelf and seldom reviewed.

 

Carrie Perrien Smith is a professional speaker, published writer, and owner of Soar with Eagles, a Rogers, Arkansas-based company. She is a publishing, communication, and training industry veteran whose corporate career spans 15 years, split between Texas Instruments and Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. Her company offers training, book publishing, conference management, and consulting services as well as a professional speaker’s bureau.  

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