Don’t rely on the latest tip of the day or fad of the month to achieve your personal or collective best. There will always be another leadership or self-help book, infomercial, exercise program, diet, etc., proclaiming to take you to the Promised Land. Truth be told, many techniques are helpful for temporarily improving some aspect of performance. In order to achieve sustainable excellence, however, you need a systematic approach rather than a short-term band-aid. During this three-part post we’ll describe this system:
- Establish a process
- Have the discipline to follow your process
- Avoid distractions
The process is your goal plan. While much has been written about goals, very few people truly understand the basic principles of goal setting. You must initially define your long term vision. Be bold but realistic. Be very specific about what you are trying to accomplish, with a definitive timeline. From there, work backwards and establish long-term (greater than one year), intermediate (six months to a year) and short-term (less than six months) goals that enable you to achieve your vision. Many individuals and organizations make the mistake of stopping here. The final step is establishing daily and weekly goals that allow you to achieve your long-term vision. This ensures you don’t let days and weeks slip by without doing what you need to do on a daily basis to achieve your vision. We’ll talk more about this piece of the puzzle (discipline) during the next post.
Your goals should be heavily weighted toward objective versus subjective targets. Goals such as “have fun,” “do your best,” or “relax” are subjective. At the end of the day, you or another person might be at odds about whether you achieved a subjective goal. Subjective goals can be helpful, as long as they are supplemented by objective goals, such as no missed assignments, no penalties, date night this week, or not being late for any meeting. These goals cannot be debated when evaluating your performance.
Once you have a goal plan in place you can then hold yourself accountable. In the next post, we’ll add the second component of discipline to achieving sustainable excellence.