Effective Goals

What is it about goals anyway?  What makes good ones engaging, and others ho-hum?

Dealing with an entrepreneur who seems lost or caught up with petty details, I look to see what are the goals that this person is striving to achieve.  Usually, I find that the goal is not big enough, or it’s time to change the game (…a different goal).  With the bigger, challenging goal in place, all of a sudden the “lost” entrepreneur is happy and vibrant again.

We have identified 3 elements that differentiate effective goals from their ineffective counterparts.  They are:

1. Scope and Meaning
2. Risk
3. Perspective

 

Scope and Meaning

Big goals - like tripling your business in the next 2 years - require you to look at things strategically - from the 10,000 foot level. You just know in order to accomplish something that audacious (and do-able!), that you have to change your point of view.

Often however, small overall goals allow you to get stuck working “in” the business, rather than “on” the business. You start to pick on little, almost important details when the scope of what you are going for is too small. You’re simply not busy enough and the little goal becomes a “To-Do” trap.

Linked directly with scope is meaning.  Meaningful goals and aspirations make a difference and impact how you think and operate.  Goals with a “should” attached, all too often have an uninspiring meaning. 

What goal would really excite you?  As long as they are big enough… that is the stuff of effective goals.

Risk

The size of the goal is more a function of the nature and level of risk involved rather than the number of To-Do’s to accomplish it.  When risk is present, there is uncertainty present.  You are not quite sure you can do what you set out to do…  that can be very exciting.  Exhilaration occurs when you still get it done in the face of risk.

Too much risk, by comparison, may be immobilizing.  Yet, an effective challenge that stretches you by pushing at the edges of your comfort zone, catches your attention just about every time.  What goals carry an effective balance of risk for you?

Perspective

Effective goals help to shape your perspectives.  You spend lots of time on what you look towards, but very little time on where you look from. 

Shifiting perspective allows you to put the day to day issues in the appropriate context.  You are less likely to lose track of the larger issues when you are in the midst of a big enough and engaging series of goals and objectives.

If you want to double (or triple) the size of your business within the next two to three years, then you cannot afford to get bogged down in basic issues.  You handle them and move on to the bigger issues that your big goal requires.

Do a little check of your own… 

1. Are your goals substantive in scope and meaning? 
2. Is there enough of a risk to keep your attention, but not so much to overwhelm you? 
3. Do your goals allow you to look from a larger perspective? 

Now is the time to adjust your goals, so that they serve you.