Do You Need Goals?

Do you create goals for yourself or, more importantly your employees, or do you feel goals are completely unnecessary????

It's been said, "If you never set goals, you'll never have to taste the agony of failure".? That may very well be true, but then neither would you experience achieving the exhilaration that success brings.? In an effort to avoid ourselves feeling the pangs of failure we may actually be propelling ourselves away from any possible opportunity to attain success.? Success is not necessarily any more difficult to achieve than is failure.? You need only to take the appropriate actions to become successful.? At the same time, you need only to take the inappropriate actions to experience failure.? It is as though you are on a tightrope.? Step ever so slightly to the left and you fail, step ever so slightly to the right and you have achieved success.? So, as long as you are the individual who is making the choice to go in one direction or the other; either toward enjoying success or toward enduring failure, why not say, "Success, here I come!"

Just what does it take to be successful?? Being successful is a matter of setting realistic goals in a specific direction and then reaching and surpassing those goals.? Always carefully scrutinize your goals to make absolutely sure they never become impossibly outrageous.? It is quite unfortunate, but in an effort to be what we believe is "the very best we can be" we often set goals which are too far reaching and many times completely unrealistic.?

What does "setting an unrealistic goal" actually mean?? Here is a fairly typical example of an unrealistic goal; Two years ago, you generated 30 sales for the Company, and last year you generated 34.? That equates to? approximately a 13.33% increase in sales.? Hooray, you did terrific!? This year you really want to do well.? So, you set this year's goal at 100 sales!? From 30 to 34 was understandable, achievable, and very reasonable.? It was almost a 13.5% increase.? From 34 sales to 100 is almost a 295% increase.?? Under any circumstances, attempting to achieve 100 sales really seems to be a little ridiculous.? But strangely enough, more often than not, the ridiculous is exactly what we find ourselves doing when it comes to our goals, isn't it?? If you are responding with an emphatic NO! . . . then, my compliments, you have the right idea.???

Goals must be realizable.? When you set goals that are out of reach, guess what the likelihood of achieving them is?? Good guess!? You will normally proclaim, "Goals need to challenge me or my employees."? But that, to your amazement, is not what happens.? After not reaching their goals time and time again you begin to observe a new phenomenon, the "I don't give a darn"syndrome.? Unattained goals rarely cause employees to strive with greater intensity and work even harder the next time.? In fact, what you usually see is the exact opposite.? When faced with unobtainable goals employees have a much greater tendency to simply give up.? It is not a matter of "not trying harder" the next time, your employees do not try at all the next time.? Why should you or they try, they have already acquiesced to the fact that they just cannot succeed.? And they have the undeniable proof that they cannot succeed, they have already failed once or twice before.??? Oh yes, there is one additional factor which should be mentioned at this point.? After your employees have endured a few failed attempts at reaching their goal, what happens next is that your employees begin to resent you and the Company for setting such an unrealistic goals.

After repeated failed attempts at reaching the goals you set for them, your employees begin to resent you for creating, what they consider, impossible tasks for them.? They cease blaming themselves for not reaching their goals and place the reason for their failures squarely on your head.? Sorry to say it, but in part they are correct.? From their perception you are the one who handed them a spoon and told them to remove all the sand from the beach by this afternoon.

Please do not think of a goal as the "end all achievement" that must be reached at any cost.? Rather, consider goals as steppingstones to land upon and then bound above.? Goals are not the end; they are really just the beginning.

A quality manager is continually setting goals. Do not think only in terms of annual, quarterly, or monthly goals, but minute to minute goals.? Practically every time you, the manager, speak to your employee you should be setting some type of goal for him or her.? The basic formula for setting any goal is unchanging, whether it is the Company's annual sales goal of 4,500 units sold, or your employee's daily morning goal of being 15 minutes early to his or her workstation, it is exactly the same.? Although what you have targeted each goal to accomplish may most certainly be different, the methodology behind creating the goals is unchanging.?????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????

Your primary task as a manager is to consistently maintain employee motivation.?It is not to be considered a quarterly duty, nor should you think of motivating your employees as an annual requirement. ?In everything you say, in everything you do, you are your Company's primary motivator.? Maintain that as your attitude and you will be on your way to a successful career.?

To guarantee your employees are consistently kept motivated and productive, you must continually create goals.? Creating goals needs to become a way of life for you, it is something you do as a simple matter of fact.? You create goals.? Never just allow things to happen around you.? Be the perpetual driving force for whatever transpires in your world of work and the work world of your employees.?

Set goals constantly.? Use the goal setting formula with all of your employees in whatever tasks you chose to assign to them.? Teach each and every one of your employees to cogitate in terms of goal setting, not merely completing tasks, but with everything they address.? Be it short term uncomplicated goals, or long term intricate and irregular goals, make the creation of goals a priority in your workday and in your life and you will find it exceptionally difficult to become anything other than successful!

So then, exactly what is a Goal?

I’m afraid you’ll have to wait until tomorrow.

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For additional information about David Richman and Butterfield Enterprises, Inc.? review his Linkedin Profile or contact him directly at (818) 368-1308 or email him at [email protected] . And if you haven’t already done so, please join David’s Linkedin network.