by Tony Mayo | For Business Owners, How to Set Goals
How to Set Goals
1) Describe the objective or task.
2) Specify the measurements to be used.
3) Set the target.
4) Create a deadline or performance period.
5) Priority rank multiple goals.
6) Rate difficulty and importance of goals. (optional)
7) Determine who else needs to be involved.
Strongly suggested: Get someone else to monitor your performance.
Goal Setting: A Motivational Technique That Works!
Edwin A. Locke and Gary P. Latham
See also Managing Yourself with Specific Measurable Results, on this blog.
by Tony Mayo | For Business Owners, How to Set Goals, Leadership Development, Quotes and Aphorisms
I have seen something else under the sun:
The race is not to the swift
or the battle to the strong,
nor does food come to the wise
or wealth to the brilliant
or favor to the learned;
but time and chance happen to them all.
—Ecclesiastes 9:11
Click here for more posts on luck.
by Tony Mayo | For Business Owners, How to Set Goals
My client, Raj Khera, has started several successful businesses, including MailerMailer and the MoreBusiness site for small businesses. I am Raj’s client, too, since I use MailerMailer for my email newsletter.
Raj has just released a crisp and efficient e-book titled The Naked Business Plan — How to Strip Your Concept Down to the Bare Essentials. It is worth reading and following for independent professionals, people starting a business, and businesses looking to re-invent themselves in the face of the new economic realities. Download it now.
Also on this blog,
One Page Business Plan
by Tony Mayo | For Business Owners, How to Set Goals
I asked a wealthy client about the beginnings of his fortune. As a child, he accumulated $600 through odd jobs and gifts. While in college in the early 1960s, he invested this savings into the stock market. By the time he got out of school he had multiplied his stake into enough cash to support himself for years, travel to Europe, and finance his first business.
I remarked, “Even in the go-go bull market of the 60s, that is an amazing return. You must have made some very smart investments. Why didn’t you continue onto a career in investing?”
My client is not a modest or self-effacing man, but he does see events clearly. He replied, “I did make some good investments, but I was smart enough to know I was lucky.”
Maybe this is why we use the same word, fortune, for both “chance” and “wealth.”
See also, The Lucky Rich on this blog.
by Tony Mayo | For Business Owners, How to Set Goals
People are often surprised that I do not read popular business magazines, the latest management books, or eagerly attend speeches by top executives and successful entrepreneurs. I am certainly not knowledge averse; I read a great deal and love information. I am very interested in business and know a lot about it. Clients know that there is seldom an aspect of their enterprise I can not comment upon usefully. I just do not get my data from the usual sources.
I just came across an article in the California Management Review that explains one reason that reading most business journalism and executive memoirs is worse than useless. Phil Rosenzweig’s article, Misunderstanding the Nature of Company Performance: The Halo Effect and Other Business Delusions and his book shows that bad science and poor logic permeate the business press. Rosenzweig’s demolition of the over-praised Good to Great books is especially satisfying.
…it’s easy for pundits and professors to claim that someone blundered. Decisions that turned out badly are castigated as bad decisions. However, these sorts of judgments are erroneous, made retrospectively in light of what we know to have happened subsequently. These errors are surprisingly widespread in the business world. They affect not only journalistic accounts about specific companies, but also undermine the data used for large-scale studies about company performance. They lead to a broad misunderstanding of the forces that drive company success and failure. As we will see below, some of the most popular business studies in recent years are undermined by fundamental problems of data integrity.
…
strategy is about choice, and choice involves risk. There are no easy formulas to apply, no tidy plug-and-play solutions that offer a blueprint for success.
by Tony Mayo | For Business Owners, How to Set Goals
I do some balancing postures as part of my yoga practice, standing on one foot while stretching my body. The people who taught me these postures said to “find a point some distance away and hold your gaze on it” while in the posture. I resisted doing this, preferring to let my eyes wander during the stretch. Besides, I know how to balance. It is just a matter of holding your body in the proper position. So, I wobbled or fell.
Now, I remind myself to choose a distinct object as a focus point: the corner of a doorway or the center of a flower. While holding the posture I often notice my eye wandering. And my body wavering. I can only regain my balance by (more…)
by Tony Mayo | For Business Owners, How to Set Goals
According to an article by Michael Shermer, Ph.D. in the September 2007 issue of Scientific American, several elements are needed for a movement or an idea to gain acceptance:
- The idea takes a stand for something, not against something, and is based on a positive assertion.
- The idea uses an intelligent, rational approach to tackle myths and raises consciousness and awareness.
- The idea embraces the uniqueness of self and others, and it requires us to respect each other.
- The idea encourages exploration, experimentation and a sense of adventure.
— Carole Carson
Here’s a radical idea:
getting fit is fun and contagious
LA Times
January 12, 2009
by Tony Mayo | For Business Owners, How to Set Goals
…goal setting should be undertaken modestly and carefully, with a focus more on personal rather than financial gain. They* also make the case that much more research–and more skepticism–is needed about the practice of goal setting. “Rather than dispensing goal setting as a benign, over-the-counter treatment for students of management, experts need to conceptualize goal setting as a prescription-strength medication that requires careful dosing, consideration of harmful side effects, and close supervision,” the authors write. “Given the sway of goal setting on intellectual pursuits in management, we call for a more self-critical and less self-congratulatory approach to the study of goal setting.”
—Goals Gone Wild:
How Goal Setting Can Lead to Disaster
Knowledge @ Wharton
*Maurice Schweitzer, Wharton
Lisa D. Ordóñez, Arizona
Adam D. Galinsky, Kellogg
Max H. Bazerman, Harvard
More on goal setting: podcast & workbook.
by Tony Mayo | For Business Owners, How to Set Goals
I tell my CEO executive coaching clients, prior to the executive offsite, that the CEO can dictate the values statement, perhaps with some team input on word choice. If the organization’s stated values are not entirely consistent with the CEO’s personal values you are in for a rough ride. The CEO must embody and have an emotional commitment to the vision, so it largely comes directly out of him or her, too. I like to start the offsite at a dinner where the CEO clearly and emotionally states the values and vision. Then, with those guideposts, the team can get to work on strategy, tactics, milestones, etc.
A question naturally emerges when I suggest this sequence: what about the executives who do not share the CEO’s values or vision? This helps smoke them out early and by “out,” I mean resigning from the company. Any compromise on values is a step into the abyss, what Bion called “non-work.”
by Tony Mayo | For Business Owners, How to Set Goals, Recommended Books
There have been more than 110 goal setting experiments conducted in the laboratory and in organizations in just the last twelve years. Ninety percent of these studies obtained positive results for goal setting. This makes goal setting one of the most dependable and robust techniques in all the motivational literature. … A recent study of high and low productivity … found that goal setting and deadlines were the single most frequently mentioned causes of … high productivity. [page 6]
Goal Setting: A Motivational Technique That Works!
by Edwin A. Locke and Gary P. Latham
See also Managing Yourself with Specific Measurable Results, on this blog.
Recent Comments