Goal Setting for 2014
“What you get by achieving your goals is not as important as what you become by achieving your goals.” Henry David Thoreau
John C Maxwell
In 1979, a study on Harvard MBA graduates revealed that 3% of Harvard MBAs financially gained ten times as much as the other 97% Harvard MBA’s combined. In that study, Harvard MBA graduates were asked, “Have you set clear written goals for your future and made plans to accomplish them?” While 84% had no goals at all, and 13% had goals, but weren’t on paper, 3% had clear, written goals with absolute plans to accomplish them.(Source: from the book What They Don’t Teach You in the Harvard Business School, by Mark McCormack)
Writing down your goals is like creating a Playbook for success!
Goals are a progression and represent a desire for change. Goals are meant to be challenging and difficult. So when there is a goal set into place, it needs to be deeply decided and planned. Clearly, success can be measured by the amount of accountability you put onto paper.
Before goals are set in stone, there are a few things that should be considered.
1. Make realistic goals
Start with small achievable goals and write them down. Be patient and stay dedicated on the small goals. Then step outside of your comfort zone, and take a leap forward . Utlimately, the small successes will pave a road towards your ultimate goal.
2. Create steps for those goals
If you keep focusing on achieving the end goal, you’ll undoubtedly get overwhelmed. It’s better to focus on smaller goals each month. For instance, instead of striving to increase profits by 120% over the course of a year, you should focus on increasing profits by 10% every month.
3. Stay dedicated
It can be easy to stray from your business goals because so many different tasks and issues can pop up unexpectedly, but it is imperative that business owners and their team members stay on track. Measuring success helps keep a team’s motivation high, and that is a key component to achieving daily, weekly and monthly goals. Little wins add up to huge successes.
Always keep your goals in front of you. By writing them down on paper, you will begin to see growth in both your personal and professional life.
