What’s the best way to engage people and reach your business goals? The key ingredient might surprise you.
We all know that setting clear goals and having a well-thought-through plan are important.
In fact, these are a core part of an organisation’s annual business cycle.
- But how often do you get the feeling that your people are just going through the motions when it comes to setting goals?
- How often are performance goals set and then forgotten until the quarterly or half-yearly review process starts?
It was Lewis Carroll who coined the phrase: “If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will take you there.”
The purpose of goals is to help you define what you want to achieve, focus your attention and resources, visualise what success will look like, and stay on that path.
How to make goals meaningful – moving beyond SMART goals
Goals allow us to filter out all the noise and unnecessary actions to get the things that will make a positive impact done.
Neuroscience tells us that your goals are far less meaningful when they’re set in a purely transactional, lineal way. In other words, sticking to the traditional SMART model that only engages the logical, left side of our brains.
It’s only when you engage both sides of your brain, and switch on your senses to imagine the desired end state, does the path to achieving your goals become clearer.
Imagining is a work in itself. Trying to see, feel, and immerse yourself in what success will look like when you actually get there – this is the first piece of goal clarity and ownership.
The better you and your team gets at this, the more likely you will understand why the goal is important for you and the organisation, and why it is worth the effort for you to take action.
Avoid the most common goal-setting trap
Once you’re clear on the ‘end point’, it’s time to kick into action.
But this can be where things go wrong.
Andrew Hubermann, Professor and Neuroscientist at Stanford University, found that there’s one key thing we often forget to do after setting the goal – something that’s critical to kicking us into action (and keeping us motivated along the way).
He tells us we need to:
Think about and write down the consequences of not achieving your goal –
what would it mean if you don’t hit the goal and what would be the impact on you?
We often define what we want as a result, but forget to consider and express the cost of not delivering on that goal.
Of course, in many businesses, one example of a cost is not receiving our incentives. That’s obvious.
But what about other, arguably more significant costs like continual customer complaints, missed opportunities, lost sales, double handling, burnout, etc.
Having a clear picture of what “not achieving the goal” will mean is a motivator for action toward the goal.
From there, you need clear milestones with regular check-ins so that you can pay attention to your progress. Only by paying attention and receiving positive feedback along the way will you likely hit that desired goal on target.
To discuss strategies for more meaningful and successful goal-setting, contact Joanne Fisher on + 61 (0) 423 163 319.
