Horizon Point Consulting

Category: Personal Development

We all need a little personal development mixed in with our professional and career development. Read blogs in this category for stories and best practices for personal wellness and wellbeing, skills improvement, and  more.

  • Don’t Set Goals if You Don’t (Have a) Plan to Act

    Don’t Set Goals if You Don’t (Have a) Plan to Act

    There’s some great methods out there for setting goals:

    Are Your Goals Comfortable, Delusional or Somewhere in Between?

    A Holistic Goal Setting Method

    A Simple Goal Setting Method

    And based on how a method’s strengths and weaknesses relate to your own personality and preferences, you can find a method out there that is right for you.

    But don’t do it if you don’t:

    1. Have a plan to act
    2. Plan to act

    Goal attainment doesn’t happen through osmosis.  It happens through a process I like to look at this way:

    MISSION/PURPOSE -> GOALS -> ACTION PLANS -> TASKS -> BEHAVIORS

    Breaking it down this way begins with the big picture and ends with the thing that causes the achievement of the big picture- every single thing you actually do or how you behave.

    To illustrate this, I’ll walk you through how we do this by planning as a company on a quarterly basis.  A road map might help:

    blog 1

    blog2

     

    The Annual Goal:  Set one BHAG (Big Hairy Audacious Goal) as Jim Collins calls it that is difficult but not delusional. Our annual goal is always a revenue-based goal that considers a particular profit margin to achieve within that revenue goal.

    The Action Areas:  These 2-5 areas will drive your annual goal. In our case, they are lines of business focus for us.  For example, one is our Career Development Facilitator (CDF) line of business that has been a line of business for us for several years; another is a new, niche area within our current HR consulting business; and the final one is a focus on a new line of business that we have never pursued before (although we get calls about it often).

    The Action Steps: These steps are broken down by quarter. You start DOING something here instead of just deciding. For example, in our CDF action area, we are focusing on: 1) acting to pursue business in a new state that is ripe for the training because it is required for certain positions 2) use the data we have gathered from past participants to develop an off-shoot course and 3) exceed expectations in our current delivery of programs.  You see that two are focused on growth and one is focused on what truly drives our growth- delivering a quality product day in and out.   We almost neglected this last one, but if we did, it would totally throw off how we round out the last step, which is:

    Setting Tasks:  This is where the rubber meets the road, and in the case of our business, this is how we determine what we do each day.  We typically set tasks on a weekly basis to drive our time management for the week.

    We are transitioning this year in how we do this process.  We have been using a simple Excel spreadsheet that catalogues tasks by our company values (which inadvertently links nicely with action areas), but given our company’s growth and hopeful continual growth, we are switching to a more advanced tool to help us with this, and that is program called Insightly.

    This process may seem complicated, but it actually isn’t.   The first two steps took us about 30 minutes to create when we sat down for our annual planning meeting.  Of course, having good data to help you do this makes it much quicker and easier.

    The action steps for two quarters took about another 30 minutes of discussion.  We used to plan out all four quarters then realized things change so much, that doing the last two quarters of the year too far in advance was a waste of time because they depended so much on the results of the first two quarters worth of effort.

    Our task setting takes about 30 minutes a week to do and, although we are very much a company of hard and fast paper and pencil list makers, we are hoping we can transition this into Insightly with ease and make it a habit that ends up taking less time.

    If you are more interested in this process, email us here and we’ll send you the mapping tool to get you started.

     

    Happy planning and doing!

     

  • Are Your Goals Comfortable, Delusional or Somewhere in Between?

    Are Your Goals Comfortable, Delusional or Somewhere in Between?

    We’ve been talking about methods for goal setting here at The Point Blog to set us all up for a successful 2017.  The last “method” I want to share really isn’t a method, but great food for thought for considering goals and setting them.

    It comes from Michael Hyatt who has most recently put out a course to help people prepare for 2017 called 5 Days to Your Best Year Ever.

    As a guest on the Smart Passive Income Podcast with Pat Flynn, he discussed the limitations and possibilities of making 2017 the best year yet.  In thinking about these things, he encourages considering whether your goals are in the:

    1. Comfort Zone- Where a small, incremental improvement is being sought.
    2. Discomfort Zone- Where there is some doubt and uncertainty about how you are going to accomplish the goal. It makes you sweat.
    3. Delusional Zone- Where you don’t have the capacity, talents, etc. to achieve something.

    Hyatt says, “All the great stuff in life happens in the discomfort zone.”

    As I think about this, I think in most cases we set goals in the comfort zone.  It’s something to put some effort towards so we feel like we are doing something, but it isn’t nearly challenging enough. It’s something we know we can do.  For example, setting our company revenue goal at the same level it was last year, or maybe even a small, 5-10% increase, is a comfort zone goal.  We’ve done it before; we can do it again. Losing 10 pounds when you really need to lose 30 is a comfort zone goal.  You’ve probably lost those same 10 pounds before. Over and over again.   For myself, I realized for fitness goals, running a marathon is a comfort zone goal.  I already know I can do it.  Several years ago this was a discomfort zone goal.

    Discomfort makes us sweat.  And sweat may be uncomfortable at first, but it feels oh so good when we actually expend the effort to produce it.  In business terms, we’ve averaged between 5-35% year over year growth since beginning in 2011.  We’re shooting bigger this year, setting a goal closer to 50% growth for 2017.  This makes me sweat, and wonder how we are going to do it, and realize it is going to take additional resources of time and manpower to do it, but I’m tired of being comfortable.   For fitness, running a sub four hour marathon would be a goal at this level for me (this isn’t on my 2017 goal list, though).  I don’t know if I could run that fast for 26.2 miles. I would have to shave about forty-five seconds a mile off my PR time to do it, but if I put the sweat equity in, it is possible.

    Delusional is our business being a multi-million dollar business in 2017.  We just aren’t there yet, haven’t planned for it, and don’t have the service line or the time in just a year to develop the service and/or product lines to get there. And that’s okay.  I will never qualify for the Boston Marathon, or at least not in the age bracket I am currently in.  I would have to run a 3 hour and 35 minute marathon to do it.  Cutting 45 seconds per mile off my time may be doable, but cutting 45 minutes off my total time just isn’t going to happen. The good Lord didn’t make me to be an elite runner, and that’s okay too.

    So as you consider your goals for 2017, I hope they are on the border of anxiety because this is where peak performance happens.   And peak performance is fun.

    Sweat it out in 2017, friends.

     

    If you like this, take a look back at our 2017 Goal Setting Series:

    Methods to Madness of Goal Setting 

    A Simple Goal Setting Method 

    A Holistic Goal Setting Method 

  • A Holistic Goal Setting Method

    A Holistic Goal Setting Method

    When I think about goal setting from a holistic perspective, Zig Ziglar’s wheel of life concept seems to be best.  When I’m honest with myself, I’m not really a holistic goal setter. I find it easier to set two types of goals:  Business or career goals and fitness goals. Zig’s approach helps me see that in many areas of my life that are important to me- like my spiritual life and my relationship with my friends and my husband- I’m very haphazard instead of intentional.

    The spokes of the wheel are:

    1. Career
    2. Financial
    3. Spiritual
    4. Physical
    5. Intellectual
    6. Family
    7. Social

    The approach encourages you to set a goal for each spoke, with the center of the wheel being your mission or purpose.

    Two important observations about this method that show the strengths and weaknesses of this approach:

    1. This method helps you focus on areas you may not normally tend to set goals in or find it easy to do so. Unless you are in academia or still in school, you might struggle the most with the intellectual area.  We call this our continuous learning and improvement value at Horizon Point.  Viewing it from this lens, we set “intellectual” goals as individuals each quarter around growing in an area related to our overarching business goal  (which is a revenue and profit driven goal each year). Sometimes the goal may not be directly tied to our overall business, but for the purpose of our own enjoyment.   A goal in this area I had a couple of years ago was to read 30 books that year; some of the books I read were directly tied to business, others were strictly for pleasure, and some were spiritually based. Which leads me to the next key point….
    2. Because there are seven areas of focus, things can start to overlap. It never seems to fail, if you set more than about 3-5 goals or values, you end up beginning to wonder how to classify each thing because they could be put in more than one bucket.  For example, my reading 30 books that year incorporated a major spiritual goal and that was reading The Bible in 90 days through a program to do just that so inadvertently, a spiritual goal arose that year because of an intellectual goal.

    Likewise, this year a physical goal was to run a marathon, but with my husband, dad and friends running it with me, it became a social and family goal or focus as well because it was a way to spend valuable time together both in training and in traveling to the race. It was good for me physically, socially, and quite honestly, spiritually and intellectually because when I did run alone, I listened to business podcasts or sermons.

    So using this method to set goals, like others, has its’ greatest strength that leads to its’ greatest weakness- the holistic approach can lead to redundancy.

    If you have trouble with setting goals to impact your life as a whole, this may be the method for you, but if you have adult ADD- aka difficulty focusing- then the simpler approach covered last week, may be better for you.

     

    Like this post? You may also like:

  • A Simple Goal Setting Method

    A Simple Goal Setting Method

    Goal setting works. But how do you go about deciding what your goals will be?

    The late Stephen Covey, emphasizes in at least two of his bestsellers (First Things First and 7 Habits of Highly Effective People) the concept of time management and therefore goal setting based on importance of well, what’s important.

    The method for setting your goals (or big rocks as he terms them) is simple.  Ask yourself two questions:

    • What is the one thing that if I STARTED doing it, would make a tremendous positive difference in my life?
    • What is the one thing that if I STOPPED doing it, would make a tremendous positive difference in my life?

    Answer these two questions and you have you goals.  For some, asking these two questions in the context of different segments or roles in life may be necessary, or important. For example, asking it related to your personal life and then to your professional life, leading you to end up with four focuses instead of two. But once you begin to ask yourself these questions in the context of too many things, the whole emphasis on importance gets thrown out the window making the process irrelevant.

    The interesting part of this goal setting processes is twofold:

    1. If you truly start and stop doing the one thing that really will make the most difference in your life, you end up with a spillover effect, inadvertently accomplishing more than you set out to do. The simple focus on just two things ends up impacting way more than two things.

    For example, my one thing to start in years past was to get up early in the morning (5:00 or 5:30 am) to get a workout and devotional time in. When I do this one thing- get my feet to hit the floor before anyone else wakes up in my house on a regular basis- the day always goes better.  I have more energy for the day, the morning routine of kids cleaned, dressed, fed and out the door to school happy is accomplished so much easier, and I’m more focused and productive throughout the day.

    1. This method of goal setting is also action plan oriented. Often goal setting emphasizes the setting of the goal with no true mechanism built in to get you there.  This method does both.  It gives you long-term focus and short-term action, breeding habits that change behaviors and change lives.

    This method is best for people who prefer to keep things as simple as possible and need the daily incorporation of action to create habits that lead to results.  Its downfall is also its greatest strength- it may be too simple.  Life is complex and focusing in so narrowly may inhibit people from accomplishing all that they can and should.

    Regardless of whether or not this is the best method for you to set goals, it is always good, as we begin a New Year, to consider what do we need to start doing and, often more importantly what do we need to stop doing.

     

    Like this post? You may also like:

    Best New Year’s Resolution? A ‘Stop Doing” List.

    One Goal from Pat Flynn

    Set Goals Then Forget About Them

    Goal Setting – A Series

    Goal Setting – Diminishing Returns

    Goal Setting – Feedback

     

  • Methods to the Madness of Goal Setting

    Methods to the Madness of Goal Setting

    It’s that time of year.  New Year’s resolutions abound still on this 10th day of the New Year.  We’re sticking to them now.  Will we by month end?

    New Years’ resolutions are quite simply, goals.  They can be set at any time of the year, and there are as many methods for setting and pursuing them as there are failed attempts at reaching them.

    But goal setting is a method that works. Research shows it does if it is handled within certain contexts and parameters. For the sake of full disclosure, I’m all about goal setting as a performance management method. I wish more company’s performance management and evaluation processes were centered around setting good goals tied to company values and strategy. Then, leaders could coach people regularly towards goal attainment through wise action planning and implementation.

    But the method to the madness in goal setting that works, depends on you. The method you choose to determine and also analyze your goal(s) for appropriateness is a matter of preference, not a matter of right or wrong.

    However, three I like and recommend:

    Stephen Covey- What’s the most important thing?

    Zig Zaglar- Wheel of Life

    Michael Hyatt- Pursuing the right thing in the right way

     

    All have pros and cons and cater to different personalities, mindsets and segments of life.  But all can work if you pick the right method and then, most importantly, have a solid plan for reaching them.  The action toward the goal is much more important than the goal itself (or as Nick Saban says, it’s the process)

    I’ll be describing each of these methods above so you can have some fuel for thought on which one might work best for you this year.  Then I’ll round out January with why the action plan and implementation is actually more important than the goal.

    Take the month of January to set sound goals and put a plan in place to pursue them.  The time it takes to do this is will help you achieve success for the rest of the eleven months in 2017.