4 Ways to Keep Focused on Your Goals

I don’t know about you but I am in a constant battle with trying to get the day to day tasks accomplished and accomplishing my goals for the year!

Anyone who manages a business understands the challenges of keeping the vision, strategy and business goals moving forward.

The day-to-day management issues associated with people, processes, facilities, equipment, etc. can be very distracting and can affect our ability to accomplish goals. This makes it important to incorporate goals into what we do every day.

As difficult as this is, we need to proactively stay focused on the annual goals. Some things you can do to keep goals a priority are:

1. Keep a Goal Calendar

Create a monthly calendar that shows task for the month and respective due dates. Better yet find a project planning software and manage goals and other job responsibilities electronically.

2. Schedule Time to Work on Goals

Our days go by quickly so it is important to manage our time well. Do this by blocking out a specific time each week to work on goals.

For example, block out every Monday afternoon to work on departmental goals.

Don’t let anything interfere with this schedule time and if something does interfere, make up the time on another day.

3. Use a Team To Keep the Focus

Use teams to work on goals and use the team to review goals status, due dates, completion of tasks and to identify any barriers to completing goals.

For example, if there is conflict with other departments causing delays in getting things done, identify and work to resolve issues.

Have the team review goals at least monthly so progress is monitored consistently.

4. Monitor Employee Goals

Employees should have specific goals that support organizational efforts. Monitor employee goals to help keep workers focused on priorities. Incorporate a goal status update into the weekly or monthly meeting with employees as a reminder of the importance of goal focus.

Be sure to send consistent messages to employees. They need to understand their goals and how their goals support what the organization is trying to achieve. If goals are constantly communicated, and reinforced to employees, they can help be a catalyst to getting them accomplished.

The beauty of employee goals is that if done right, they are the fuel to help you achieve your business goals. Meeting with your employees on a regular basis and reviewing goals with them is an important step in working toward goal completion.

This process communicates to them the importance of their goals and it also allows you the opportunity to help them overcome any barriers they may be encountering in achieving those goals. Bottom line: employees learn very quickly that if it’s important to you, you will talk about it and if it’s not you won’t. Keep talking about it!

It is a fact of life that day-to-day distractions happen and compete for our attention. However, we cannot allow distractions to slow us down. We need to stay focused on tasks that keep moving the organization forward.

This is always a tender balancing act but can be strategically managed. In the same way you stopped to think about and map out your goals, stop right now and map out a plan that will enable you to achieve them!