The Business Sensei

Goal Apocalypse

It’s a new year. That means two things: one, the world didn’t end in the so-called “Mayan Apocalypse” of 21 December 2012; and two, since the world didn’t end it’s time to figure out some resolutions for the New Year. Perhaps a good one is not worrying about Mayan Apocalypses or Aztec Apocalypses or whatever the next apocryphal apocalypse might happen to be! At least that one has a chance of being kept.

Of course, as we all know the problem with New Year’s resolutions is that they never last long anyway; indeed, in most cases a New Year’s resolution has about as much likelihood of coming true as the latest predicted Apocalypse. Even when we move from the realm of resolutions, which tend to be fairly vague, to the more specific area of goals, we don’t see a significantly greater success rate.

Why not?

The major problem most people have with setting goals is that they don’t take the time to really think through what they want to accomplish. They fall back on the SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-bound) formula, and then wonder why it didn’t work. While the formula is a good mnemonic, the mnemonic doesn’t really tell you how to use it.

The trick is to start at the end: what are you *really* trying to accomplish? When someone says they want to “get in shape,” do they mean run 2 miles? A marathon? Bicycle? Play tennis? Lose weight? When a business says it wants to ship a product, again, what is the outcome they are seeking? Who will buy it? Why would they want it?

It’s important, therefore, to describe how the world will be different if you accomplish your goal. By fleshing out that description, you can then identify which pieces you can control and which ones you can’t. You can write a novel, but you can’t force any given publisher to accept it. However, you can engage in behaviors that will make it more likely (researching appropriate publishing houses, investigating agents, getting advice from published authors, researching the steps to get a novel published in the first place!, etc). This will develop into your strategy: a series of steps that move you toward your goal. Those strategic steps will often turn into smaller goals along the way. That’s great: it helps you manage and track your progress.

The time element comes in when you start planning how and when you will execute the steps. You can also define trigger conditions that will cue you to work on your goal: “on Monday after I finish my coffee I will…”

Don’t try to keep all your goal directed behavior in your head: calendar entries, checklists, etc, are all good tools for keeping track of what you should be doing when. Indeed, just the act of writing out your goals at the start of the year can help you focus on them. Silly as it sounds, we tend to not believe ourselves if we don’t write down the goals. The act of writing is what moves us from dreaming to doing. While the complexity and number of people involved will vary depending on whether you are writing out an individual or a business goal, the process is fundamentally the same.

It’s important, by the way, to not set too many goals. If you overload yourself with goals, you will fragment your attention, and that may well make it hard to focus on work or make you short-tempered: you’re using your brain power to manage all your goals and have nothing left to resist the urge to snap at that irritating co-worker. 3-4 large scale goals are usually as much as you want: remember that the process of designing your goal strategy means that a few big goals can generate a lot of little goals!

The challenge is thinking big and simultaneously being realistic about the commitments on your time and energy. The best goals strike a balance between the two.

Stephen Balzac is an expert on leadership and organizational development. A consultant, author, and professional speaker, he is president of 7 Steps Ahead, an organizational development firm focused on helping businesses get unstuck. Steve is the author of “The 36-Hour Course in Organizational Development,” published by McGraw-Hill, and a contributing author to volume one of “Ethics and Game Design: Teaching Values Through Play.” Steve’s latest book, “Organizational Psychology for Managers,” is due out from Springer in 2013. For more information, or to sign up for Steve’s monthly newsletter, visit www.7stepsahead.com. You can also contact Steve at 978-298-5189 or steve@7stepsahead.com

Curse of the Half-Empty Glass

“What was the primary means of motivation in those days?”

“Fear.”

— Carl Reiner and Mel Brooks, The Two Thousand Year Old Man

For the 2000 year old man, fear may have been a very effective motivator: when he saw a lion, he was motivated to run the other way. That, in a nutshell, is the problem with fear. Fear doesn’t make someone move toward safety; it makes them move away from danger. Same thing? Not really. In jujitsu, pain can be used to invoke a fear of injury. Someone experiencing that pain, and that fear, will move away from it, even if moving away means running full tilt into the nearest tree.

In business, the same phenomenon occurs. Faced with an unexpected problem or setback, the most common response is to highlight the threat to the organization and all the terrible things that will happen if the threat is not immediately countered. This practice of attempting to motivate people to work harder through fear – fear of competition, loss of market share, job loss, company going out of business, and so forth – may encourage harder work, but not necessarily more effective work. In the business environment, there are a lot of trees.

While fear gets the adrenaline flowing, it also narrows focus, reduces creativity, and makes it harder for people to recognize and change a losing strategy. This would be fine, except that what is actually needed in most situations is a creative solution, the ability to accurately assess whether or not a strategy is working, and the ability to quickly discard failing strategies. Avoiding premature decision making, no easy task at the best of times, only becomes more difficult. As we all learned in grade school, in the event of a fire, don’t rush for the door: proceed slowly and avoid panic. The same is true in business: rushing to a decision is almost guaranteed to lead to a bad decision.

So given that the business needs to get employees focused and energized to meet a potential challenge, how should it go about doing that?

The key is to recognize that the glass in not half empty. It’s half full. That makes a difference: instead of focusing on what you lack, focus on what you have going for you. Instead of fear, instill an atmosphere of optimism. There are several steps to accomplishing this:

• Start by defining success. What does it look like? What will your business have accomplished in order to have been successful? Communicate that in a few brief, vibrant, sentences. If you don’t know where you’re going, you can waste a lot of time not getting there.
• Lay out a set of goals that will make the business successful. Include what you’ll be doing as well as what you expect others to do.
• Remind employees of previous challenges that they’ve successfully overcome. Emphasize the positive: how teams pulled together, how individuals stepped up to the plate, and so forth.
• Recognize that roadblocks will appear: don’t assume everything will go perfectly. The competition may do something unexpected. A critical employee may get the flu. A storm may disrupt travel or power. Make sure you’ve allowed time to deal with the unexpected so that it doesn’t derail you.
• Present energizing images to use when bad news strikes or setbacks occur: a cyclist passed by an opponent can imagine a rubber band attached to his opponent’s back. The rubber band pulls him faster and faster until he passes said opponent. Come up with the equivalent for your business. Repeat it frequently. If you can’t keep a straight face, find a different image.
• Take the time to brainstorm different solutions to the problems you are facing. Evaluate what you come up with and make sure it will get you to that success state. Rushing off down the wrong path wastes valuable time and, even more important, drains enthusiasm.
• Periodically review progress and show people how far they’ve come. Pilots may care more about the runway ahead than the runway behind them, but everyone else is motivated more by how much they’ve accomplished rather than being constantly reminded of how much more there is to do.
• Celebrate successes. Short-term reminders increase the sense of progress and make people feel appreciated.

Half empty or half full. A fearful team or an enthusiastic, creative team. It’s your choice.

Happy New Year!