Five Profoundly Simple Steps to Goal Achievement*
This model is both simple and profound, as the title suggests. Here are the five steps to achieving goals, followed by a couple of examples:
1. Have a goal
2. Have a plan
3. Work the plan
4. Manage direction
5. Throw off discouragement
Let’s imagine that you’re the equipment manager for the Detroit Tigers. Your team is playing the White Sox Tuesday and your job is to get the bats, balls, gloves, catcher’s gear and uniforms to Chicago in time for warm ups. That’s the goal. Your plan is to load the truck Monday and get on I-94 west driving through Michigan, Indiana and into Illinois where it becomes the Dan Ryan Expressway. You will take the 35th Street exit and turn into the lot for Guaranteed Rate Field. You work the plan by doing what you intended: loading the truck and driving west. But, guaranteed that during baseball season, I-94 will be under construction somewhere between Detroit and Chicago. Sometimes construction zones cause slowdowns, backups, or even closures and detours. So your plan hits a snag somewhere in Indiana and you have to get off the expressway. Now you’re heading south on a country road instead of west on a six-lane highway. Managing direction means finding a way to get past the obstruction and back on 94 West. And while it is almost impossible to imagine the Tigers’ equipment not showing up on time, we have all experienced the frustration of an unexpected traffic delay. Consider the anxiety you might feel if the 40,000 fans and 50 players are potentially waiting on you to show up with the equipment so the game can go on!
Since most of us don’t work for professional sports teams, try another example. In this case consider a salesperson who represents a home security company. This year her goal is to increase sales by about 11%, to move from $900,000 to $1 million. At the million dollar level she and her family have enough commission to pay for their daughter’s college tuition without student loans, and she qualifies for an award trip to Cancun so she and her husband get a vacation compliments of the company!
1. Goal: increase sales to $1 million
2. Plan: Call an additional 10 prospects per week, expanding the territory northward from Ann Arbor into Northville, MI. The list of prospects has been cultivated from the Northville Chamber of Commerce as well as new building permits from the county planning division.
3. Work the plan: In addition to keeping current customers happy, the sales person joins the Northville Chamber and attends social functions. She also hits the phones, contacting business owners and managers to set appointments to present her company’s services.
4. Manage direction: while she is able to set appointments, no one will sign a contract. Her close rate plummets toward zero for the first time in her career. Finally, after not closing yet another deal, she learns from her prospect that the giant national security company XYZ Security, has a local rep who has been spreading lies about her firm. Her company offers superior technology, monitoring and has a unique web-based client interface. But prospects have been told by the other rep that her firm’s technology is used by hackers to steal end-customers’ credit card data. She clearly needs to change her approach to counteract the misinformation in the marketplace. She could do this by addressing the lies up front in her initial calls, testimonials from satisfied clients in Ann Arbor, or maybe something different like confronting the other rep. Perhaps she needs to find another market where she isn’t head to head with that rep from XYZ. But because she has lost some time, now she will need to make 20 prospecting calls per week instead of 10. In any case, the current plan isn’t working, even though she is working the plan!
5. Throw off discouragement. Most failed goals get derailed at the point of discouragement. The security salesperson could realize that her plan isn’t working and get into a funk. She could convince herself that she won’t make $1 million in sales and start figuring out how to apply for student loans. Virtually every accomplished goal faced some bump in the road. But the people who succeed figure out how to push through the discouragement. They decide that the goal is more powerful than the distraction. They have a support team, a boss, a friend, a spouse or a spiritual discipline which helps them put the discouragement into perspective. They acknowledge and identify the obstacles, and find a way to keep moving toward the goal.
It was almost impossible to imagine that the Tigers’ equipment wouldn’t arrive in time for their White Sox game. Pushing past emotional impediments to our goals will make it impossible for us to fail, too.
Obstacles are inevitable and discouraging. Find a way to keep moving toward your goals regardless of barriers.
*This model comes from Doug Lennick and Roy Greer’s book, How to Get What You Want and Remain True to Yourself.