It’s 168 Days Until New Year’s Eve: How’s It Going?
Time seems to fly by faster with each coming year, and we seem to get busier each year too! Consistency, July’s word of the month, is sometimes sacrificed as we move at the speed of light trying to keep up with an ever-changing, always demanding environment, but achieving our long-term goals depends on it. As we reach the mid-year milestone, it is the perfect time to take a breather and check out how we are doing and what the last half of our year should look like if we are going to shred our goals.
How consistency helps you reach your goals. Goal-setting is important to success, but without consistent habits that work directly toward those goals, your goal-achievement efforts may fall flat. Many organizations make the mistake of spending their time and resources busy working on tasks that don’t move the needle on their high-level goals.
Here’s a simplified example: Imagine you set a personal goal like dropping ten pounds. You start out strong with good eating habits and hitting the gym a few times per week. Then after one month, you get sidetracked miss the workouts and begin to eat fast food for lunch. While your goal of dropping a few pounds is sound, it will only happen with the consistent work it takes to achieve it.
Understanding SMART goals. No, this has nothing to do with your IQ (whew)! SMART goals are specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and timely, hence the acronym SMART. It is akin to setting criteria to make the goals you set better and in turn, ensuring your success in achieving them. Let’s drill down on the components of SMART goals:
- Specific – Your goal should target a specific area.
- Measurable – The results of your goal should be measurable (using data or metrics to help you understand when you’ve met or missed your goal).
- Attainable – It’s always great to shoot for the moon, but when you’re setting SMART goals, they should be attainable.
- Relevant – Is your goal relevant to your business, to your audience and to your overarching vision?
- Timely – Even long-term goals should have a target date.
Questions to ask yourself before you engage. Before you start working toward any goal, you should run through a standard litany test to make sure you are doing things for the right reasons. Here are a few questions to ask yourself:
- Does this activity serve my unique business needs?
- How does this activity roll-up to my business objectives?
- Am I doing this for the right reasons?
Just yesterday, I had a conversation with a fellow business owner who wanted to explore a digital advertising technique that was being pitched to her. “It is the latest and greatest way of marketing, shouldn’t I be doing it?” she asked.
The truth was, no. What she was hearing about might have been the most “trending” marketing technique, but it simply did not work for her business. It hit home to her when I asked her what this person understood about her business, her clients, and what she wanted to achieve.
Your goals should fit into your business’s unique style and, most importantly, into your customer’s buying behavior style. Setting goals cannot be a one size fits all proposition, they should always be tailored to fit.
Why is this important?
If your activity has a direct impact on the very thing you want to achieve, you will more likely to commit to consistency and benefit from the fruits of your labor.
Now that we’ve covered the basics, it’s definitely time to do that midyear check-in…New Year’s Day will be here before we know it!