Productive Goal Setting

Posted on October 27, 2012 by Harry Che

Author: Mark Combs Inspirationalist / Motivational Speaker / Aflac Acct Mgr

How many of us set goals for ourselves at the beginning of a new year? Answer: We ALL did. It’s the natural thing to do for most of us at the onset of a new year.

Now, a more important set of questions: Do you remember what those goals were? Did you reach them? Do you remember what steps you took that led to success (or failure)?

The Four Elements of Productive Goal Setting:

The next time you find yourself in a place that sells lottery tickets, invest a dollar. A computer generated set of any six numbers will do, because none of the numbers need to be present in the next drawing for “this ticket” to be your winner.

Now display the ticket in a place where you can see it daily, along with these four basis principles.

Elements of a Productive Goal:

1. For any goal to be a productive goal, it must be clearly defined

- The clearly defined goal in this case is to “Win the lottery”

- Whether your goal is personal, business related, self-directed or imposed by a higher authority, it must be clearly defined.

- How else will you know you’re moving in the right direction? How else will you know if you’re moving in any direction at all?

2. Your plan of action must be simple to execute and monitor

- In this case, the plan of action is to “Purchase a ticket”

- You must put together a clearly defined game plan if you are serious about reaching your clearly defined goal

- People who “fly by the seat of their pants” usually fly in circles more often than necessary.

- What football team takes the field on game day without a game plan?

- Would a builder start construction on a new house without blueprints in hand?

- What retailer hopes to spark continuous sales growth without an advertising campaign?

3. Your plan must include a predetermined investment

- In this case, our investment is $1

- The risk involved should never overshadow the anticipated reward of success.

- Don’t be so driven to succeed that you fail to put preset boundaries in place. My mother used to use the phrase, “cut off your nose to spite your face”

- None of us “plans to fail” but sometimes we overlook the need to count the cost (money, time, effort, sacrifice) of what it will take for us to fully reach our goal.

- You’ve no doubt heard the phrase, “Spend a dollar to make a dollar” If that’s your current line of thinking, then you should put that dollar back in your pocket and search for a better return on your investment.

- The cost of investment should never outweigh the benefits of success.

4. Success should always naturally lead to a secondary goal

- What would you do if you won the lottery?

You know you’ve thought about it at least some and some people I know actually have a set of clearly thought out plans in place. Not a bad idea, actually.

- Does achieving your clearly defined goal from step one include a natural progression to another clearly defined goal?

- It should! And if it does, success won’t be a surprise, it will become an expected part of your day.

Oh, and if that lottery ticket does happen to have the right sequence of numbers, feel free to cash it in and buy another one to pin to the wall.

 

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How To Get More Done Everyday

Posted on August 27, 2012 by Harry Che

Why is it that so many of us manage to create time for meetings important clients, and yet when it comes to the rest of our day we struggle to get other important tasks done? If you’re sick of procrastinating, overwhelmed by your workload or struggling to meet deadlines then it’s time to take a different approach to the hours in your day…

One very effective way to get more done everyday is to start scheduling – and turning up to – ‘Very Important Meetings’ (VIM’s) with yourself. During these VIM’s you get to focus on the key tasks you need to achieve without distraction, and that’s where the key to getting more done every day lives.

It’s important to understand how breaks in concentration can cause havoc when it comes to effectiveness which ultimately dictates how much we achieve in any one day, and how successful we are both personally and professionally. Research into worker habits and distractions shows that we tend to change tasks every three minutes on average, and often take about 25 minutes to return to that original task. Even more staggering is that 28% of each 9-5 period is depleted by such interruptions and one estimate suggests that these interruptions can take up to 2.1 hours of an average workers day! Is there any wonder why so many people are stressed and struggling to maintain a balance in their life?!

By blocking time out in your diary to focus on a particular task or project without interruption will allow you to fully concentrate and therefore increase your levels of productivity. When you’re working to your full potential you will get more done in less time, creating more precious spare minutes – or even hours – in your day.

This isn’t a ground-breaking discovery, it’s simply a fundamental part of smart time management. However it’s easy to forget what you should be doing when your email alert keeps going off, your twitter updates are pinging onto your screen and your mobile phone’s vibrating frantically! With all of these modern day distractions, combined with gossiping colleagues and ringing phones it’s more important than ever to make sure you block out time in your diary to get the important tasks done in the most time-effective way possible. This also helps create a sense of satisfaction, reduces stress and overwhelm, and allows you to reach your goals more rapidly. All in all, it’s a recipe for success and one that doesn’t take a lot of ingredients – here’s what you need to do:

Write down 3 key tasks you need to get done today that will help contribute directly to your goals. Pick only 3 – no more, no less! Having a long list of ‘to-do’s’ distracts the mind which impacts your level of focus.

  1. Schedule ‘Very Important Meetings’ with yourself, blocking out chunks of time in your diary to get each task done.
  2. For each block of time, imagine it’s a meeting with the CEO who’s about to give you a big pay rise – have respect for that time-slot, turn up, pay attention and focus on the end result!
  3. Where possible book a meeting room or shut your office door, turn off your mobile, disable email alerts, and avoid social media like the plague. Again, you wouldn’t distract the CEO with this kind of stuff, so show your work the same respect.

So what do you want to achieve today? And what are you going to do with the time you save? Start scheduling your VIM’s now and look forward to getting more done in less time!

Source: Apsley Recruitment

 

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Building Better Business Goals For 2012 And Beyond

Posted on January 13, 2012 by Harry Che

The beginning of a new year gives us an itch for things like resolutions, goals, personal and business improvement of all sorts. If you’re interested in setting and reaching better business goals in 2012, here’s how to do it.

Start by looking back

Looking forward is great, yes. There’s nothing wrong with envisioning where you want your business to be in six months, one year, five years, ten years. But looking forward and visualizing the success you want to achieve is only half the equation, according to Piers Steel, author of The Procrastination Equation. Positive visualization of the future works best when you compare it to where you have been and where you are now. Doing so allows you to see the gap between your current position and the place you’d like to go, says Steel. Seeing the gap is a powerful motivator for getting you into action to start closing it.

Ways to look back:

  • Write a year-end evaluation of yourself or your business as a whole.
  • Look at the books: what was your worst month and best month in terms of numbers? Why?
  • Make a quick list (5 to 10 items) of the best moments in your business in the last year. Then make another list of the worst moments. Look for patterns.
  • Ask your employees for their take on the last year: best and worst moments, areas of strength and weakness in the business.

Taking a good look back should give you two definite kinds of goals: goals to improve or strengthen areas of weakness (you’ll draw these goals from seeing failures of the past year) and goals to build on your successes.

Focus, focus, focus

You can’t do everything, at least not all at the same time. In order to actually reach the goals you set for your business in 2012, you need to choose one to three areas and focus on them with intensity.

Why limit yourself? Because the time, energy and money you have are finite resources. You can spread them thinly in order to cover a lot of areas, and as a result make very little progress in any one area. That’s a common approach to goals, and it gets discouraging when you can’t see any notable improvement.

Think of the need for focus in terms of a peanut butter sandwich. If you’ve only got one big spoonful of peanut butter, how many sandwiches can you make? Well, you can spread it really thin, and make five disappointing sandwiches. Or you can heap it all on a single slice of bread and make one spectacular sandwich.

Lavish your attention on a single area (or two), and achieve great progress.

Refine your goals

Once you’ve chosen a few areas to work on, you need to turn your broad goals of “improve in XYZ areas” into good goals.

Good goals need to meet certain basic criteria:

  • They should be specific. “Raise revenue” becomes “Increase sales by 10 percent.”
  • They should be measurable. “Encourage innovation” becomes “Develop five new product ideas.”
  • They should be realistic. “Raise our customer service level to make Zappos look like a bunch of deadbeats” becomes “Train our employees in excellent customer service.”
  • They should be action-oriented. “Get a better marketing plan” becomes “Test three new marketing strategies.”

Build a basic plan for each goal

Basic is the key word. You don’t need a 10-page booklet for each goal. In fact, the fewer words you can use to communicate your plan, the better. We tend to get lost in our own words and plans and lose sight of the simple actions we need to take.

So make a plan for each goal, but keep it short, keep it simple and then start taking action. Your plan should provide this basic information for each goal:

  • The desired outcome (the specific, measurable, realistic, action-oriented goal)
  • The actions needed to reach that goal
  • The person(s) responsible for each action
  • The deadline for each action
  • The means of accountability (checking in, meeting, sending completed work to the next person, etc.)

All the rest you can figure out as you go, tweaking the plan as needed. That’s okay. Good goals are also flexible.

Once you make the plan, get it to the appropriate people and get moving forward.

“In the short term, we regret what we do, but in the long term, we regret what we don’t get done,” says Steel. “Inaction causes us the greater suffering.”

Don’t suffer from inaction in this New Year. Make your 2012 a year of setting and reaching better business goals.

Annie Mueller writes about all aspects of productivity in life and at work. Her work can be seen at numerous on line publications. She blogs at AnnieMueller.com. Find her on twitter: @anniemueller.

 

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Four Types of Employee Performance Goals

Posted on August 24, 2011 by admin

by Marnie Green

If you establish performance goals during the annual performance evaluation process and have often wondered where to start, here is a little guidance. Many supervisors and employees see goal setting as the opportunity to list the training classes the employee will attend for the coming year. And, while learning goals are appropriate, the goal setting process can be much more meaningful. Here are four kinds of goals that you might consider when setting annual performance goals.

1. Essence of the Job Goals

These are the goals that clearly describe tasks that are required on the job. For example, an accountant might have a goal to prepare and submit monthly financial statements. A librarian might have a goal to catalogue and reshelf returned books within 12 hours. A mail clerk might have a goal that requires her to deliver all mail daily to all work sites. Essence of the job goals make the expectations for the job clearer than they are listed on the job description. These goals personalize the job to the position and to the individual employee.

2. Project Goals

Project goals are those activities that the employee will pursue with a beginning and an end and may be above and beyond the employee’s routine duties. Project goals can be related to improving systems, developing new products, creating new programs, or anything else that you can think of.

3. Professional Development Goals

Professional development goals specify what the employee will learn for the coming year. While attending a class to learn something new is noble, try to find new ways to help employees develop their skills while clearly linking the goal to the organization’s needs. For example, “cross training in a new work area at least one day per week” is a professional development goal. A better goal would be to cross train in the accounting department at least once per week and be able to reconcile bank statements by October 31.

Or, “attend a training class on PowerPoint and develop a new slide show to be used in new employee orientation” would be more challenging than just attending the class. Make sure the professional development goals not only develop the employee, but also help your organization.

4. Performance Improvement Goals

Performance improvement goals should be saved for those times when you want to emphasize clearly that an employee’s behavior must change. Performance improvement goals include things like, “arrive to work ready to serve customers at 8 a.m. every day” or “limit the number of customer complaints you receive to three per quarter.” Obviously, not all employees would need these kinds of goals. However, they can be helpful in documenting your performance expectations in a clear and measurable way.

Now, go out there and set some goals! Make your expectations clear and everyone wins!

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How to Boost Employee Productivity

Posted on August 12, 2011 by admin

It’s a jungle out there. Cash is dear, the lackluster economy is driving competitors to slash prices aggressively, and hungry competitors are surfacing from overseas. To stay competitive, organizations need to keep productivity high while on a budget. Doing this has never been more important, but it doesn’t have to be hard if the leader you’re staring at in the mirror knows how to motivate employees.

Leaders who adopt certain practices can drive productivity in many ways at virtually no cost. I place the practices into two categories: general practices that apply to all employees and employee-specific practices.

General Practices
The biggest general productivity-boosting practice comes from delivering a plan that takes employees from point A to point B. Point B needs to be some distance from point A, or you’ll get a yawn from employees rather than increased productivity. You’ll also need to make sure that every employee has specific roles and deadlines in the plan and that each is held accountable for meeting the due dates with quality. Employees’ juices really flow when they know they are accountable for delivering something important to a company’s success.

Another employee productivity booster is being generous with praise for employees who go the extra mile, improve their performance, meet stretch deadlines or exceed expectations. It’s important to make sure the praise is deserved, because gratuitous comments are not motivating to the recipient and demotivating to everyone else. The impact that recognizing employees has on productivity never ceases to amaze me — but it’s easy to understand because so many leaders are stingy with praise. When employees finally have a boss who recognizes their achievements, they are flattered, energized and grateful that their boss can tell a slacker from a producer.

The productivity dividends from being a role model leader can also be huge. So many employees have worked in Dilbertesque environments that when they have a boss who earns their respect, they are motivated to be part of her team and to demonstrate that they are valuable members of the team. As a role model, a leader wants to telegraph ideal employee behaviors, such as being timely, organized, collaborative, considerate, honest, quality-oriented, empathetic, a good communicator, a learner, having a good attitude and taking initiative.

The productivity dividends from being a role model leader can also be huge. So many employees have worked in Dilbertesque environments that when they have a boss who earns their respect, they are motivated to be part of her team and to demonstrate that they are valuable members of the team. As a role model, a leader wants to telegraph ideal employee behaviors, such as being timely, organized, collaborative, considerate, honest, quality-oriented, empathetic, a good communicator, a learner, having a good attitude and taking initiative.

  1. Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs defines the order in which employees are generally motivated to satisfy their needs. Physiological, or food and shelter, is the need satisfied first; safety is second; social needs third; self-esteem fourth; and self-actualization, or being all that one can be, is fifth. When leaders know which employees are trying to satisfy which need and focus on appealing to it, increased productivity is a natural outcome. Keep in mind that appealing to a need that is already satisfied will do nothing for productivity and that a satisfied need can become unsatisfied and in need of being satisfied again. For example, when the recession hit, millions of employees who were trying to satisfy their third-, fourth- or fifth-level needs reverted to making sure that physiological and safety needs were being met. Leaders who didn’t notice the change found themselves managing unmotivated employees who were desperate for their bosses to give them some assurances that their jobs were safe rather than hosting company get-togethers that might appeal to the social need, or offering challenging projects to satisfy a need for self-esteem.
     
  2. The late David McClelland, a Harvard psychology professor for three decades, identified three major groupings of motivational types: achievement-motivated, power-motivated and affiliation-motivated. I have found that knowing an employee’s type is indispensable to driving productivity. An achievement-motivated employee will be supercharged when given an opportunity to make a significant difference or advance his or her skills. A power-motivated employee will be energized by money, winning, a big office or anything that communicates power. An affiliation-motivated employee is electrified by working with agreeable colleagues. Too many times I have watched executives scratching their heads when a big bonus scheme failed to deliver boosts in productivity. Little did they know that the perceived 800-pound gorilla of motivation is a 99-pound weakling when it comes to influencing achievement- and affiliation-motivated employees.Which is more important to employee motivation, satisfying a need on Maslow’s Hierarchy or appealing to motivational types? Maximizing motivation requires you to appeal to both. Keep in mind that if someone is struggling to meet her physiological or safety needs, helping to satisfy these needs may be the only thing she finds motivational.
     
  3. Is an employee introverted or extroverted? In general, employees who are extroverted will be most productive when they are out pressing the flesh or working on tasks that require engagement with people. Employees who are introverted will be most productive when they are working on projects that require contemplation and working alone. Send an introvert to forge relationships at a networking event, and productivity will be low. Place an extrovert on a committee to analyze the implications of reams of statistics, and productivity will be similarly low.I am often asked how to identify need levels, motivational types and whether someone is introverted. My solution isn’t infallible, but it’s pretty accurate, reliable — and quicker and cheaper than a battery of tests. This solution is caring enough about your employees to observe their behaviors and responses. Incidentally, when you heighten your attention to employee behaviors, the employees will notice that you care, and that will give you another free productivity boost.

One last thing: If your competitors have higher productivity because of higher wages or bigger investments in technology, you can gain the upper productivity hand when you focus your attention on motivating employees. Management is a people’s game, and there is nothing that will yield higher productivity dividends. I have found that a motivated employee can easily be twice as productive as a marginally motivated employee.

When you appeal to the desires of employees to contribute to the achievement of company goals, recognize employees for a job well done, behave as a role model and appeal to individual employee motivations, you demonstrate your knowledge that management is a people’s game. Furthermore, you show that you know a leader’s No. 1 job is motivating her employees every day — because that is the key to increasing productivity and staying competitive.

Source: WomenEntrepreneur.com

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How to Set Goals for New Employees: Tracking and Monitoring Goals

Posted on July 28, 2011 by admin

Once you’ve effectively set the goals for your new hire, you need to find a way to track their progress. As a manager, it is vital that you adapt and adjust goals as necessary when business warrants it or when new information becomes available.

Schoof and SunRun’s process of re-assessing goals at six months and one year is a great example, but you should be actively tracking progress on an even more regular basis as a manager. It’s a great idea to be flexible with regard to goals, but don’t change them too often unless you really are certain that those alterations will help the goals of the larger business. Altering goals too frequently can mean that you’ve lost track of the big picture.

“One of the most effective ways that we’ve been able to track goals is literally to sit down with employees and have an honest discussion,’ Schoof adds. “Failing to follow up shows the employee that you might not care as much about their success as you did when they originally started.’

Source: Inc.com

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How to Set Goals for New Employees: Defining Expectations for New Employees

Posted on July 27, 2011 by admin

It obviously differs by organization, but it takes specificity, clear communication and collaboration from the HR representative, the new hire and their immediate boss when you are outlining what your expectations for the new hire should include.

Here are a few tips, according to George Bradt, the managing director of PrimeGenesis, a Connecticut-based executive onboarding and transition acceleration group he founded in 2002.

1.    “Assign clear, specific, realistic, and useful goals.’ The more specific the goals are, the easier they are to measure. Telling an employee to “just do your best’ doesn’t clearly state anything.

2.    “Be a positive performance role model.’ One of the most effective ways to get employees to embrace your goal-setting program is for you, the manager, to set and achieve challenging goals for yourself as well. Your positive expectations often set the stage for better performance and create a positive association between you, the performer, and his or her success.

3.    “Be supportive and express confidence in your workers’ ability to achieve goals.’Allowing your new employee to take personal responsibility for developing strategies and an action plan to reach goals means that the manager understands the employee’s value. As a boss, be sure to provide specific feedback and develop a positive impression of yourself in new employee’s eyes, providing them timely and detailed feedback about reaching the goals.

 

 

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How to Set Goals for New Employees: Why Set Short- and Long-Term Goals

Posted on July 26, 2011 by admin

Managing goals effectively has long been a mantra of salespeople, account executives, and other employees whose main responsibilities are focused primarily outside the organization. But in terms of goal-setting and expectation management, that responsibility falls on human resources managers as well. From the beginning, the human resources manager is essentially bringing new employees’ expectations in line with the organization’s expectations. Accurately aligning these sets of goals helps employees to become productive more quickly and ensures that they enjoy greater job satisfaction throughout their tenures.

“In terms of defining goals, we set six-month and year-long goals for every employee and for our organization as a whole,’ says Pat Schoof, vice president of human resources for SunRun, a San Francisco-based home solar energy provider that had a big staff increase in one year.  The staff grew from 30 to 88 employees in 2010, with more scheduled to start before 2010. “Those can obviously change as business progresses during the course of the year, but particularly when you’re bringing on a new hire, it’s something we take very seriously.’

So how do you set those short- and long-term goals and then actually follow through on them? It starts before the hire is even made, but day one is the best opportunity you’ll have as the employer to define both short- and long-term goals, be it professional (projects) or personal (familiarity with the company culture and structure).
“It’s a great idea to give them a project early on so they really feel like they’re contributing,” Thomas says. “It doesn’t have to be the most in-depth work, but it will be good to get their feet wet and they won’t feel like they’re simply getting oriented. From there, start thinking about the bigger project at hand, which should have been something you addressed with the candidate before you even made the hire.”

Source: Inc.com

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How to Set Goals for Employees

Posted on July 25, 2011 by admin

Adapted from The Wall Street Journal Guide to Management” by Alan Murray, published by Harper Business.

What should we do? That is the first question the manager must answer. What is the mission of the organization I am managing? What is the strategy for accomplishing that mission? What are my goals for the future, consistent with strategy and mission? What are the overall goals for my team, and for each member of the team?

This may sound obvious. But it is remarkable how many managers never get to this basic question. They take their mission, strategy and goals as given – something that has been set by others. Perhaps it’s their boss, or their boss’s boss, or perhaps it’s just built into the situation or organization in which they work. These managers will spend their entire work life reacting – reacting to orders from above, reacting to pressures and problems from below, or simply reacting to the insistent demands of a busy workplace.

If all you do is react, you will fail as a manager. You may be good at solving problems that arise. You may be skilled at responding to the needs and requests of those you work for, or the people on your team. You may work long hours, be loved and respected by your employees, and be the very model of organizational efficiency. But you will not be an effective manager.

One of the most popular management books ever written is Stephen Covey’s “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People” – a book that describes seven practices that will lead to success in either your personal or your professional life. Habit number one is simply this: be proactive. The very essence of being human, Mr. Covey writes, is self-awareness – the ability to think about, and ultimately make independent decisions about, your life. Your actions are not simply determined by “nature” – your genetic make-up, or by “nurture” – your upbringing, or by the environment in which you live and work. Rather they should reflect your ability to choose your own course. Effective people focus on being proactive, not reactive, and looking for the things they can do, rather than dwelling on those they can’t.

The effective manager is the same. Any workplace is filled with constraints. You may have an overbearing boss, you may have an extremely limited budget, you may not have enough people to do the job you’ve been asked to do, you may be part of a culture that is hugely resistant to change. There’s an understandable tendency for people to fall into a familiar pattern, and just do things as they’ve always been done, or do what others ask them to do. Your job as an effective manager is to do better than that. You must understand all the constraints, and know which can be changed and which cannot. And then you must decide on a positive course forward.

That leads to Mr. Covey’s habit number two: Begin with the end in mind. It’s not enough to simply choose a course; you must have a clear sense of where that course will lead you. You need to decide both what you are going to do and where it is going to take you. In short, you must have a strategy.

As a manager, it is your responsibility to decide on goals for yourself and your group. But it’s not something you should do in isolation. You must make sure the goals you set for your team align with those of the broader organization. And you must make sure that your team understands, accepts and commits to those goals. The more you can involve your employees in setting goals for themselves and the group, the more committed to those goals they are likely to be.

Most managers recommend that you write down the goals for your team and each of your direct reports, and then revisit those goals on a regular basis – perhaps every six months, or once a year. When writing goals, it’s helpful to keep the following tips in mind:

– Goals must align with the organization’s mission and strategy.

– They must be clear and easy to understand.

– They must be accepted and recognized as important by everyone who will have to implement them.

– Progress towards goals must be measurable.

– Goals must be framed in time, with clear beginning and ending points.

– They should be supported by rewards.

– They should be challenging, but achievable.

The last point is particularly important. Goals should give your team something to reach for. But they should not be unreachable, and their attainment or lack of attainment should not be dependent on a host of circumstances beyond the person’s control.

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Checklist: How to Set Up Your New Hires for Success

Posted on July 21, 2011 by admin

By

One of the aspects of my role as a manager that I genuinely relish is on-boarding new employees. I enjoy those first few weeks, when I have an opportunity to influence someone’s career. Because face it: The way a new employee is treated when they arrive colors their attitude and aptitude for the rest of their time in your organization. Treat them well, pair them with a great mentor, and provide the tools, technology, and training they need, and they are well-equipped for success. Screw it up, and they might never recover.

That’s why I was happy to see Dick Grote talk about on-boarding in a recent post at the Harvard Business Review. I’m already a believer, and you should be too.

Of course, large companies usually have some sort of institutionalized onboarding process for new hires. Smaller, less bureaucratic companies might not want something as formal, but they should still put together an on-boarding checklist to make sure they have all of their bases covered. It’s not rocket science; look around your organization and pull together the information and resources that will position people for success.

Don’t forget to:

  • Set up a new PC and be sure it’s configured with email and other internal tools he or she will need.
  • Print a box of business cards and have them available the day the employee arrives.
  • Ensure the workspace looks inviting — a nameplate is tangible proof that you recognize you’ve hired an individual (even if that individual is about to work in a cubicle).
  • Create an organizational chart in a program like Visio and explain it in detail to the new hire.
  • Assign a peer mentor to your new hire to answer questions and deal with issues as they arise in the first few weeks.

What else is part of your on-boarding process? Weigh in with what’s important in your company in the comments.

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