Step closer to the goal

By MARK STORY

So you think you know where you're heading in your career or personal life and the paths you need to take to get there. Are you sure? Quickly jot down your dream goals, and the steps you're taking to achieve them.

If you can't do it, don't worry - most people struggle with goal-setting, says sports psychologist turned corporate consultant Craig Lewis.

He's convinced that goal-setting mantras used in professional sport are just as relevant in the team-dominated corporate world. To prove it, Lewis has taken the goal-setting techniques he's created for top athletes and professional teams - including the Football Kingz and the Kiwis rugby league squad - and adapted them to the corporate arena.

He believes successful goal-setting is all about establishing systems and processes to achieve them. As football operations manager for the Football Kingz, Lewis gets every player to perform a post-match review, and identify four aspects of the game they can improve on during the following week.

As well as these physical goals, players also have to work on two life skills and nutritional and mental goals every week.

As in sport, he says it's doing the things that aren't necessarily enjoyable - the reflective and planning stuff - that typically determine overall success.

"The trouble with cruising through life without clearly defined goals is never achieving your potential, and being less resilient to setbacks," argues Lewis.

"It's the same in business: companies that survive on cashflow simply fail to maximise opportunities."

So what are the secrets of successful goal-setting? First, Lewis suggests writing down specific goals. He says there are two reasons why some people deliver on their goals while others struggle: their goals are either too vague or simply unattainable and are set too far ahead.

"Goals need to be challenging but realistic. They need to be slightly out of reach," says Lewis. "Successful people see goal-setting as a regularly revisited process as opposed to a stand-alone event."

While it's good to have big long-term goals, he says they need to be broken down into a series of short-term victories along the way. These are the steps he recommends.

* Identify your dream goal. "The old adage that if you have no particular destination, any road will get you there, is pretty apt. The process of goal-setting should help people get in touch with who they really are."

* Identify what action plans or processes you need to take to achieve your end-goal. "Identify the specific processes that will deliver these goals, then commit to an action plan."

* Once you've identified the improvements you need to make, ask yourself: are they achievable and by when? "One of the single biggest mistakes people make is not setting specific time targets once the big-picture goal is set."

In sporting terms, Lewis says athletes are unlikely to improve unless they're prepared to scrutinise past performances. For example, he discovered that a triathlete he was working with was better equipped to deal with the mind-games experienced while competing, after reviewing where her race-plan was breaking down.

Lewis identified that she needed to overcome fatigue and soreness - previously seen as dysfunctional processes during her race. "As in business, there's a bit of a psychology in framing thought processes around the positive," he says. "There's lots to be learned from our failures."

The biggest trap that catches companies, especially smaller businesses, says Lewis is recruiting people who don't share or understand their visions and goals for the business.

After experiencing high staff turnover last year, it became clear to Paul Bell, managing director of the ad agency Hot Mustard Communications, that his 18 employees had only a vague idea of where he and his partner wanted to take the business.

After hiring Lewis to run his business mentoring programme, Bell realised the departments didn't share common goals.

"We finally realised that if we gave individuals and each department the opportunity to contribute to goal-setting, we were more likely to achieve desired outcomes," says Bell.

As well as defining one, six and 12-month goals, Lewis helped to identify hurdles and what needed fixing to clear them. Bell says asking employees to set their own goals was a voyage of discovery for some. Those whose personal goals weren't aligned to either their team or to overall business goals left the company.

"A lot of our business is about egos, and the [creative] environment we work in means people don't always work well together. One of the programmes we ran with Lewis was on utilising flexibility to encourage effective team participation."

Through this exercise, Bell and partner learned the need to compromise goals to maximise team input. Having team goals, he adds, also highlighted the role individuals within them had to play.

"The net effect of goal-setting was a better realisation of who we are, what makes us successful, and the steps needed to achieve desired goals," concludes Bell. "Better definition of goals within roles also highlights individual contribution within our organisation. It also gives clients a better insight into who we are."

For example, what staff want most within 12 months, Bell explains, are new premises, family inclusion in company successes, and above all, extra staff to lighten workloads. To deliver these goals, staff concluded they would need to create an extra $2 million worth of business.

"Small and medium-sized business owners like us needn't fear loosening their reign on the business. It's through empowering staff to share in developing and achieving goals that your business is most likely to grow."

So does everybody really have time for goal-setting? Absolutely, says Lewis. He recommends using the time in the day when even the busiest people cease being truly productive as a good time for goal-setting. If people spend just 30 minutes over breakfast on a Monday reviewing and preparing, weekly goals should take care of themselves, he says.

Entrepreneur and bee pollen tablet pioneer John Triggs says when people or organisations really tune in to what they're trying to achieve, they can save lots of time downstream. The problem with company meetings is they get so caught up in the "witch-hunt" or celebrating past successes that they fail to critically analyse where things are at now.

Triggs believes too many organisations rely on talented people instead of systems for achievement. To him, goal-setting is simply a map for getting to a destination and overcoming roadblocks along the way.

"As well as giving you permission to have a go, goal-setting leads to behavioural changes and creates confidence. But you really need to know yourself before you're ready to set clear goals."

Assuming goal-setting is 99 per cent common sense, why, then, do so many people get it wrong? That's simple, says publishing veteran Gordon Dryden - most people don't dare to dream. The trouble is when many people do dream, he adds, their goals are so airy-fairy they do little more than tee themselves up for failure - and the resulting lack of confidence puts them off further goal setting.

"They're constrained by narrow vision," he says. "Walt Disney put it sweetly when he said if you can dream it, you can do it. People need to develop both a built-in crap detector, and to have greater resilience.

"Dare to dream something you're really passionate about, and establish specific steps to achieve it."