Everyone around the table looked at each other. There was silence in the room. This was the third time they had met off site as a team to do their strategic planning for the business. Their coach had just asked how they had done on their five goals for the quarter. No one, including the CEO, was willing to own up until Don, one of the young up and coming members of the leadership team, said “we sucked—we didn’t make one of our five goals.”
Have you created your 2018 plan yet? I have, and I hope that you have too. Having a plan gives you direction so that as you make decisions throughout the year you have a better chance of ending up at the place you want to be.
In case you have not created your plan, here is a way to simply and quickly create your plan today.
Entrepreneurs need to set clear goals to get what they want in their business. The question then becomes what is a clear goal? A clear goal is one where everyone can agree that a finish line has been crossed when you get to the end of a quarter or year.
While the concept might be simple, finding, setting, and making clear goals is often more art than science. When you meet with your senior executive team to set your annual and quarterly goals, look for these three things when goal setting.
Clutter is a fact in all of our lives. We recently had to say good bye to our long-time Honda Odyssey Van whose second transmission gave up. We scrapped the van, but its summer tires have been sitting along the side of our house since January. I finally made the commitment to get them out, photograph them, and put them for sale on Craigslist.
The problem with clutter is that it drags at us draining away some of our limited energy. As entrepreneurs, the more drains and distractions we have, the worse our performance and that of our business. Regularly clearing out the clutter frees us to pursue more of the key strategic initiatives that will push us and our businesses ahead the fastest and furthest.
Things were tense onboard Van Kedisi. The four of us had sailed that morning from Los Christianos on the island of Tenerife. We were approaching San Sebastian on the island of La Gomera, Christopher Columbus’ launching point for sailing across the Atlantic Ocean. All four of us onboard were working together to spot the entrance channel and the tiny opening to the harbour as we passed massive ferries on the commercial dock. On a sailboat you all have to work together because your lives depend on it. In this instance grounding out on a rock or hitting the breakwater would not likely have cost us our lives, but it would have done serious damage to Van Kedisi scuttling our well laid plans to sail across the Atlantic together.