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First things first: welcome to another new year!
The first days of the calendar year are a time for taking stock, for looking back at the year that has gone and contemplating the year to come. We evaluate the past, and make plans for the future. For many of us, these plans start out as New Year’s Resolutions. This year, I WILL finish that project… I WILL make that trip I’ve been thinking about… I WILL use that gym membership… I WILL learn a new language… does any of this sound familiar?
Businesses go through the same process at the beginning of January. TrueLanguage is no exception – only a few days ago we were marking off the last of our completed goals for 2013, and now here we are, getting started on a brand-new list for 2014! We came a long way last year, and we wouldn’t have been able to make this progress without being mindful of our targets from the outset. If you’re creating a list of goals for 2014, we’d like to share with you some tips that have been useful to us in setting goals, achieving them, and developing positively as an enterprise.
1 – Know your strengths and play to them. When setting goals for improvement, it’s tempting to zero in on areas of weakness, to focus exclusively on them and work to bring them in line with areas of strength. It’s a nice idea, but big gestures like this rarely turn out well – ask any physical trainer what happens when you concentrate all of your workout efforts on your least-developed muscles. To get in shape, you exercise your whole body with your existing strength, so that the weaker parts will catch up as your general health and wellness increase. Your business already has unique assets and strengths; set goals that will bring these to the fore, and every aspect of your operation will feel the benefits.
2 – Shoot for slow and steady progress. As noted above, big sweeping gestures may seem like a good idea. It’s natural to want to see improvements tomorrow or next week, rather than in a few months or years. Natural, but not wise. Be realistic, and be patient. Work towards your goal at a measured pace. Build your castle one stone at a time. If you’ll excuse another gym reference (‘tis the season!), we all want that six-pack, but it takes months of committed effort and life-habit adjustments to get there. If you try to go from a post-holiday belly to abs like granite in two weeks, you will end up in the hospital. Don’t focus your whole business on improving for the future, when you’ve got clients and projects in the present that need your attention. You’ve got time. Take advantage of it. Don’t rush.
3 – Keep your goals specific and achievable. This one should go without saying, but let’s say it anyway – know the difference between a specific, achievable goal and a vague, general goal. You want to make a list of goals that can be marked off as they’re achieved, and for this purpose, “make a million dollars” or “do the best work ever” won’t cut it. The more specific the goal is, the more concrete steps you can plan to reach it. “Build an impressive client list”? That’s a fine idea, but not much of a goal. “Leverage our team’s strengths to target clients x, y and z”? Now you’re talking.
4 – Set goals for performance, rather than results. This might seem counter-intuitive, but it may be the most important tip for creating a goal list that will help, rather than hinder. The point of making such a list, after all, is to keep you and your business climbing upwards and improving. To do this, you need achievements to measure your progress by. Look at item 3: if your goal is “make a million dollars”, and you concentrate your energies on making a million dollars, but don’t make a million dollars, what has happened? You’ve failed. And be honest – without a great deal of luck on your side, if you posit “make a million dollars” as something achievable in the short term, and not an ultimate long-term end, you are setting yourself up for failure. You don’t need that. No one needs that. So, instead of basing your goals on desired end-results, structure them around the processes and performance that will get you there. What can you do in the short term to get closer to $1M? Better yet, what’s something simple and useful that you can do (and check off your list) every week, or every day?
As an example, let’s talk about writing for a moment. Your TrueLanguage blogger has some experience with long-form writing projects. Achievable goals are essential for getting a writer through hundreds of pages, in numerous drafts and revision states. A sense of impending failure will do nothing to help the process, but that’s exactly what the wrong kind of writing goal will give you. “Finish a chapter by Tuesday” or “complete first draft by end of week”? Those goals will provide great satisfaction if you meet them. But if you don’t achieve those results? Failure. Instead, how about a goal as simple as “write every day”? There’s a lot of freedom in there, and no implied necessary result to intimidate or block you. It’s not “write like a Pulitzer Prize winner every day”, or “write 3000 words every day”. Just “write every day”. It’s relaxed, it’s eminently doable… and if you do it long enough, eventually you’ll have a completed novel/screenplay/opera/thesis on your hands. Performance-based goals, not results-based goals. Performance-based goals will get you to your results.
5 – No negativity allowed. Hey, maybe you won’t make a million dollars. Maybe you won’t blow all of your competitors out of the market, or sail around the world before you’re 50, or make the next summer blockbuster. You might, and you might not. The thing is, you surely will not if you spend time dwelling on the possibility that you will not. Positive thinking alone will not get you where you want to go. However, attitude does go a long, long way toward bringing your goals within reach. You will face obstruction, you will experience doubt and uncertainty. What do you do? Brush them off. When you encounter criticism (not if, but when), accept the constructive and dispense with the negative. Eliminating negativity from your work environment is a tremendous boost; time you don’t spend fretting about what might go wrong = time you can spend making progress. Find the most effective ways to maintain a positive atmosphere around you at all times, and make it happen.
So, we’ve got all of 2014 ahead of us… what are you going to achieve this year?
