So, why are goals so important?

“It must be borne in mind that the tragedy of life doesn’t lie in not reaching your goal. The tragedy lies in having no goals to reach.”

Benjamin E. Mays

The change over from one calendar year to another is a prime example of when your thoughts turn to ‘what the future might hold’ — and you start to think about the year ahead and make plans: join the gym to meet your health plans; you book holidays to cater for leisure plans and have something to look forward to. You may even want to change your job or career.

What do all these have in common? They are just dreams and wishes unless you convert them into a goal.

Let’s face it: how many gyms are full to bursting in January only to return to normal in February? How often do we say we will change our job only to remain in the same role at Christmas? Where most of us are better is the annual holiday, we get organised for this! Hmm, I wonder why?

New Year’s resolutions are a type of goal — badly flawed in most cases — because we do not clearly define them or attach a plan to them — and in most cases, we make them on a whim.

In this video, Ricky talks about three elements essential to making a New Year’s resolution work.

If you want to accomplish something you care about, it will involve defining goals — you may not realise it or refer to it as a goal. Still, the reality is you accomplish nothing without a goal, however well (or poorly!) defined that goal is.

How do goals work?

“If you set your goals ridiculously high and it’s a failure, you will fail above everyone else’s success.”

James Cameron

Goals work by activating your reticular activating system (RAS). This part of your brain focuses the mind on what’s important. So, when we program it with something as powerful as a goal, we unlock a powerful weapon that is now armed to look for connections to help move us forward to our desired future — your conscious and subconscious working to help you achieve your goal.

A great example of how the RAS works is when you want a new car, not necessarily brand new, but new to you. When you decide on the make, model and colour, your RAS starts looking, and suddenly, you notice many cars that match the one you are looking to buy. Were they there before, or have they just appeared?

What do goals need to make them work?

“All successful people have a goal. No one can get anywhere unless he knows where he wants to go and what he wants to be or do.”

Norman Vincent Peale

For goals to work, they need five ingredients:

1. Something specific to achieve, have or become.
2. A measure to determine when you have accomplished it.
3. A time scale to focus your mind.
4. A relevance or importance — otherwise, why bother?
5. A level of confidence that you can achieve your goal.

You probably recognise this is the goal-defining technique — SMART, but you may not notice that we believe the order should be different.

Graham explains why the order of SMART should be different in this video.

A great way to look at goals is to use the goldilocks effect:

• Too easy, and you will be uninspired.
• Too hard, and you will give up easily.
• Aim for just right, stretching enough to make it worthwhile and meaningful but not too easy that it fails to get you up for it.

Why do they say writing your goals down is so important?

“If they are not written down, they’re just dreams. When you write things down, it sets off a chain of events that will change your life.”

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Writing your goals down forms a conscious reinforcement and commitment to your goal. Your memory will never be stronger than the written word, so it removes wriggle room, preventing you from rewriting history later down the line.

Writing goals down has many benefits:

• It channels our motivation and forces us to think carefully about what is important to us.
• It helps us prioritise, set goals and determine why they’re important to us and activates our conscious mind.
• Writing them down allows them to seep into the subconscious, enabling us to make connections and recognise thoughts and actions that contribute towards our goals, even when we are not actively thinking about them.
• It is a constant reminder (provided that we revisit it regularly) and helps the RAS look for connections.

You could take it to another level, like one of our valued clients who took their commitment a step further. They externalised their goals, not just with their partner, their boss or other work colleagues (assuming they have); they shared them on LinkedIn! What better way to demonstrate your commitment to your goals?

Externalising your goal with others elevates your commitment and is a valuable driving force when things get tough. It also means that others can support, help and even make connections for you. And let’s face it; there’s nothing quite like the psychology of public commitment to get us to act congruently with our words.

What types of goals are there?

For us, goals fall into one of four types:

1. Those you can quantify and measure, for example, financial, process or service improvement.
2. Those that are subjective or qualitative, for example, team morale, relationships and feelings.
3. Those that are big, complex and made up of many parts like projects and programmes.
4. Those that are visions or aspirational goals, for example, company visions like Apple, who want to ‘make a ding in the universe’.

But what happens when we’re given a goal we don’t want?

“Imposing a goal on someone is like placing all your chips on black 13 and expecting it to come in — you leave the outcome to fate.”

It happens all the time in the workplace, but if it’s something we don’t want to do or don’t feel is important, it may never happen. For a goal to be achievable, we need to believe in it.

If you, like me, have ever had a goal imposed upon you, it’s not a great feeling and certainly not motivational. Especially when that goal is uninspiring or too demanding, this leaves you with a sense of reluctant acceptance, and I’ll give it a go — hardly a recipe for a successful outcome.

How could you help your people take on new goals?

“A goal set for or imposed on others is not truly owned by them without involvement, a compelling purpose and commitment.”

You can help your people with new goals in several ways, but they may take more time than simply handing goals out at the beginning of the new year or quarter. Goals are more likely to be accepted if you involve your people in defining them and explaining their purpose and what makes them crucial to the organisation.

We recommend investing the time upfront; it will save you loads of time later, build stronger commitment and inspire your people.

1. Share the big-picture goals with your people and involve them in the goal-defining process; they will surprise you with their ambition!
2. Set the frame and allow them to define their goal. Your role is to coach them to get clarity, ensure it aligns with the big picture goals, help them find personal meaning and begin building the plan with some creative thinking that explores ideas, resources and potential obstacles.
3. If the goal has to be imposed, at least spend time with them to understand their mindset — is it helpful, or are they having doubts? Encourage them to surface their unhelpful thoughts and explore them. How many assumptions are they making? How many are founded on incorrect or outdated information? How many are valid concerns? How could you help them? Well, as is #2 above, coach them — your job is to set them up for success!

How do you define your goals?

You may already have some goals, but they may not yet be fully formed; they may be just ideas. What they need — is bringing life and adding a bit of detail — even a bit of colour to provide clarity, purpose and belief.

It doesn’t matter if your goals are personal or work-related; the process is the same:

Get clarity:

• What specifically do you want to have, achieve or become?
• How will you measure your success? What evidence will you provide to demonstrate that you have accomplished your goal?
• By when will you have achieved your goal? The date should be an exact calendar date as you see on the front page of a newspaper.

Have a strong purpose:

• Considering everything you have on your plate, what makes this goal so important to you?
• Assuming you haven’t got a Time-Turner like Hermione Granger (Harry Potter) and access to time travel, what are you prepared to give up to achieve this goal?

Have belief:

• How confident are you that you can achieve this goal with the time and resources at your disposal?
• How will you manage dips in confidence as you pursue your goal?

Ultimately, look to get your goal into a single sentence:

‘By [insert exact calendar date], I will [insert specific outcome you intend to accomplish] as measured by [insert how you will prove you have achieved it, what will you show?].

You should then add two benchmark scores:

On a scale of 1–10, where 10 is high, how important is this goal in relation to everything else you have going on? [insert your score/10]

Recognise that a score of 10 means it is the most important thing in your life right now. Also, if your score is four or less, it is unlikely to get prioritised highly enough to focus on it.

On a scale of 1–10, where 10 is high, how confident are you that you can achieve your goal? [insert your score/10]

You are not looking for a 10/10 here, which might suggest your goal is too easy (remember, Goldilocks); you are ideally looking for a six or higher confidence score. However, if you score four or less, you should review the size of the goal or consider extending the timeline.

Here are some resources you may find helpful from our YouTube Channel:

Wishing you a successful year in pursuing and achieving your goals.