The Objective - Good May Not Always be High Payoff

Happy 2023! This time of year is full of goals and talks of goals, plans, and achievement.

As I set my goals for 2023, I thought of this scenario in my head that I hope resonates with you like it did for me:

John works for a manufacturing company. He is interested in improving his productivity and hitting more goals this year. He signs up for a leadership program and is ready to get started.

John sets a goal of increasing his bottom-line profits by 20% in the months of January and February over last year and cutting down on his phone screen time by 50% in the month of January. These seem like SMART goals, so John starts to move from the 30,000 foot view down to the small, daily action steps portion of goal setting. Everything seems good so far.

Now, when John begins to write out his action steps, he stops for a moment. To increase profits and decrease screen time, what steps should John write down? Maybe set more sales appointments? Maybe turn his phone on do not disturb during work hours? Maybe he needs to check in with front line managers more each week? These could be good ideas.

However, John writes down the following:

1.??????Start running 2 miles per day.

2.??????No eating after 8:00 PM.

3.??????1 date night per week.

4.??????Respond to emails first thing at the office.

5.??????Organize desk.

These are all good tasks. There is nothing wrong with them at all. Actually, they will potentially produce good results in some areas! However, there is a problem. There is no correlation to the objective that was set at the beginning of the course. There is no tie between the actions and the goals. Although something is “good,” it may not be best for achieving the actual goal that is desired at the moment.

If you were facilitating this leadership program, you would no doubt raise some red flags and ask John to explain how these goals tie to their objective. You would then help John realize that the action steps that need to be taken are those that actually get him closer to the original objective and goal that was set. Just because something is good, does not mean it is ALWAYS a high payoff activity in correlation to a goal.

As you set your own goals for 2023 and begin taking actions towards them, I would encourage you to assess if your actions align with your own personal and professional goals. Sometimes we need to do for ourselves what we do for others. Take a moment today to look at your current activities to see if they truly align with the personal and professional goals you have set.