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I don’t know about you, but I am in a constant battle between trying to accomplish the day-to-day tasks and working on my annual goals!
Anyone who manages a business understands the unique challenges of keeping the vision, strategy, and business goals moving forward.
Our day-to-day issues with managing people, processes, facilities, equipment, etc., can be very distracting and affect our ability to accomplish goals.
This constant tension makes it vital to learn how to incorporate our goals into daily activities.
As tricky as this sometimes feels, we must focus on the annual goals.
Here are a few things you can do to keep goals a priority and not let them fall on the back burner!
4 Tips to Keep You Focused On Your Goals
1. Maintain A Goal Calendar
Create a monthly calendar that shows the necessary tasks for the month – with respective due dates.
Better yet, find a project planning software and manage goals and other job responsibilities electronically.
For instance, if you have a goal to improve the customer experience, try to incorporate tasks every day, week, or month that support that goal.
2. Schedule Time to Work on Goals
Our days go by quickly, so it is vital 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.
I worked with someone once who would only commit to meetings in the morning because her afternoons were focused on high-level goal tasks.
Don’t let anything interfere with this scheduled time, and if something does interfere, make up the time on another day.
3. Use A Team To Help Keep The Focus
Use teams to work on goals and use the group to review the goals’ status, due dates, completion of tasks and to identify any barriers to completing goals.
For example, if a conflict with other departments causes delays in getting things done, identify those conflicts and work collaboratively to resolve issues.
Have the team review goals at least monthly to monitor progress consistently.
4. Monitor Employee Goals
Employees should have specific goals that support organizational efforts. Monitor employee goals to help keep workers focused on high-level priorities.
Incorporate a goal status update into the weekly or monthly meeting with employees as a reminder of the importance of goal focus.
For instance, create a goal update agenda item for each time you meet with direct reports. This practice will ensure employees understand the importance of completing goals.
Be sure to send consistent messages to employees to help them understand how their goals support what the organization is trying to achieve.
If goals are communicated continuously, employees can serve as a catalyst for getting them accomplished.
The beauty of employee goals is that if done right, they are the fuel to help you achieve your business goals.
Meet with your employees regularly and review their goals to show support for their efforts.
These crucial moments of conversation with employees communicate the importance of goals. Additionally, it 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.
Focusing on goals is always a tender balancing act, but it can be strategically managed.
In the same way, you stopped to think about and map out your goals – stop right now and create a plan that will enable you to achieve them!