goals

Change is on its way

Communication comes in both words and deeds, so clear procedures, goals, methods, and deadlines are required. In successful transformations, leaders actively look for ways to obtain clear performance improvements, establish goals in an annual planning system, achieve these objectives, and reward the people involved with recognition, promotions, or financial incentives. Nothing undermines the communication of a change vision more than the behaviour on the part of key players that seems inconsistent with the vision. I think attitude training is just as important as skills training as guilt, political considerations and concerns over short-term results stop people from having honest discussions. It’s not possible to change habits built up over years and in some cases decades after only one workshop.
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““Language isn’t just a means of communication, it’s a reservoir of memory, tradition, and heritage.” ”
— Sinan Antoon

The pursuit of knowledge

Nowadays, we are especially sensitive to signs of trustworthiness in our leaders, and compassion increases our willingness to trust. The smartest people in the world know they don't need to know it all, as highly intelligent people seem to be consistently engaged in the pursuit of knowledge. I think the power of paying attention to our attention is that we become aware that this other stuff is happening that isn’t related to our goal and may actually prevent us from accomplishing our goals.

““The problem is not people being uneducated. The problem is that people are educated just enough to believe what they have been taught, and not educated enough to question anything from what they have been taught.””
— Richard Feynman

Effort vs. results

The Pareto Principle is also referred to as the 80/20 rule, and the concept originated from an observation made by Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto. This principle suggests that approximately 80% of effects are driven by 20% of causes. Therefore, I think one should focus on the 20% that yields 80% of the results as not everything is a priority.

Remember that results must be S.M.A.R.T (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-Bound) and should be defined in terms of goals that can be clearly measured. If the goals are achieved, the results are accomplished, and the job is done. Efforts are actions and they specify the plan that must be executed to achieve the results.

The scoreboard never lies

I think systems are more powerful and effectiveness than goals. My ultimate aspiration is to maintain lifelong health, mobility, abundant energy, and endurance, enabling me to enjoy playing with my great grandchildren. To achieve this, I recognise the importance of establishing a set of disciplines to guide my actions. While goals are valuable for providing clarity on what needs to be accomplished, they only serve as a temporary guide. It's crucial to emphasise that the system or process we adopt is the key differentiating factor, and this system encompasses a collection of habits that support my long-term vision. Once I know the direction I'm heading, I can set the goals aside and focus on faithfully following the system. This is because achieving a goal might bring momentary satisfaction, but it's the consistent adherence to a well-designed system that leads to lasting and meaningful results.

Dreams inspire the soul

Happy New Year, may all your dreams and goals be fulfilled in 2023. When we have a clear, inspiring vision of our desired future, it can unlock energy and creativity to pull you ahead. To achieve our goals, we must know what and how to learn, then actively search for information in a consistent and purposeful way. We call short-term goals confidence builders, these are goals for the immediate future, for example, tomorrow, this week, this month, this year. In contrast, long term goals are our dreams and visions for the next 3 to 5 years.

  • Where do you want to go?

  • Where do want to be?

  • What do you want to see?

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Do you agree?

If you agree with the Greek philosopher, Aristotle, that all human action is purposeful in some way, and you are only truly happy when you are doing something that is moving you toward something that you want. The big questions then become:
·  What are your goals?
·  What purposes are you aiming at?
·  What do you want at the end of the day?

This year I had the opportunity to work with a global financial services organisation, and they clarified their purpose as ‘enabling positive futures’. In other words, the better able they are to deliver financial services, the more likely they are to enable the positive futures of their customers. The key was that every employee in their organisation was conscious of this purpose and incorporated it into everything they did.

Pursuing purpose

Purpose gives you an overriding reason to do and act in certain ways, then using agile practices to respond to changes in the environment, I think you will be able to align quickly to the direction that you set. The commitment to the framework goals that you are trying to pursue, and the purpose driven approach helps you to do that as well. Agile is very people centred, it’s about giving people autonomy so that they can pursue the initiatives that you are trying to put in place. Agile is the ideal approach to execute change because it tends to make more committed employees and give them more of a reason to want to engage and develop the change programmes you are trying to pursue.

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Life is just a moment

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There are times when we all long for a simple way out, a procedure to follow rather than a process to understand. I think a mentor is someone who shares their knowledge, skills, and experience, to help another to develop and grow; and a coach is someone who provides guidance to a client on their goals and helps them reach their full potential. There is no reason why you cannot be both a coach and mentor, as the skillsets required to fulfil these roles are similar and to some degree interchangeable, for example, forming relationships to help a person develop. They are both rooted in learning and training and require a level of trust, respect, and communication in order to work.

 

When I am coaching, I usually coach on a specific topic or skill and focuses on “you”. I expect that after coaching this specific topic or skill you will be able to perform in a day-to-day basis using the knowledge gained from it. When mentoring, I’m focused on the present and future whilst using my experience and perspectives gained from the past elevate and evolve the current relationships. Does this make sense? Contact me now to book your coaching and mentoring sessions.

Redefining your goals

A campaign without a clear goal is essentially a waste of money, as you won’t know how to measure the impact or value of the work you’ve put in. Goals are there to provide clarity, purpose, direction and vision. Whether personal or commercial, they are what lead to success for you, your department, and the business as a whole. Hitting your goal proves you're making an impact. Contact me via e-mail for an evaluation of your goal setting procedures.

Identifying your brand metrics

What goals should brands be focused on?
It’s a combination of enhancing your brand, building up your credibility and cache and lead generation. There are several other goals that may be important as well, such as the sense of accomplishment. I’d strongly suggest that you don’t let the more intangible goals get in the way of the tangible ones as you can do both – it just takes planning, discipline, and focus.

 

Here are some action goals:
⁃            Add value
⁃            Make it work for them
⁃            Know your business goals
⁃            Make it actionable
⁃           Stay flexible
Contact me via e-mail for an overview of your brand goals.

Setting goals

I wrote it down, put a date on it, listed the obstacles I had to overcome, identified the people, the groups, the organisations I needed to work with, spelled out a plan of action, set that time limit in there, and identified all the benefits to me. It was only when I did that, that the goal became a reality.

“If you want to achieve your goals, help others achieve their goals.”
— Zig Ziglar

Talk is cheap

What are the changes we seek to make, in order to become the type of person we want to be?

There are a series of choices we have to make, and I think these choices are easier if we have habits. Habits get us results; goals are results! Having a goal that you are going to for example, go to lose weight does not tell me anything. Whereas having the goal to go to the gym every other day for 6 months and you are going to get as fit as a fiddle is a way more specific goal and is totally in your control.

Startup thinking

When you start a business there is a method and there are things you need to do in order to build it up. In business you have to set certain goals that you want to achieve and then act towards achieving those goals. Once you have defined your goals and begin to pursue them with your team you will find that obstacles continuously arise as you go towards it.

Whenever you create something new, it’s rarely a smooth progression, you will have to overcome obstacles along the way in the form of people or situations that go wrong. When an obstacle arises, immediately face the obstacle which comes in the form of a situation, something not working, something going wrong or perhaps somebody trying to sabotage you. Never react towards the obstacle as if this should not be happening, face it and see what the way beyond it is. How can I either dissolve it, bypass it, or use it? So, I do not enter a state of reactivity when obstacles appear on your paths.

What is your relationship to difficulties and obstacles that arise as you travel towards your goal? 

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Basic goal setting

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When setting a proper goal whether it be for your career, physical, spiritual, social, family, intellectual, or financial well being, you need to make sure it follows this simple format:

S – Specific

M – Measurable

A – Achievable

R – Realistic

T – Timely

I think a good way to ensure you’re able to stick to your goals is by setting SMART goals. Do something today that is going to move you out of your comfort zone and put you one step closer to achieving the goals you have set for yourself.

Goal-setting theory

The American organisational psychologist, Edwin A. Locke pioneered the goal-setting theory. The simplest and most direct explanation of why some people perform better than others is because they have different performance goals. I think that nothing intelligent has ever come from intelligence alone, and nothing reasonable has ever come from reason alone. The essence of the theory is:

  • Difficult specific goals lead to significantly higher performance than easy goals, no goals, or even the setting of an abstract goal such as urging people to do their best.

  • Holding ability constant, and given that there is goal commitment, the higher the goal the higher the performance.

  • Variables such as praise, feedback, or the participation of people in decision-making about the goal only influence behaviour to the extent that they lead to the setting of and subsequent commitment to a specific difficult goal.

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Don’t mistake courtesy for consent

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Some salespersons are busy going around and around but never seeing clients, so their progress is small. Many sales trainers forget to separate “knowledge” and how much time salespersons should spend in front of their clients in their sales training. It’s essential to teach salespersons that they should never mistake activity for achievement.

Do you have a systematic way of getting better every day?
It often takes more than a good idea to make things a success. All around us there are hidden forces which make it difficult for us to reach our goals, close a sale or convince others to adopt new ideas, often, an outsider’s expertise is most helpful in identifying these areas of improvement. I would like to offer you a free 30 minute consultation to help you maximise performance and leadership - for yourself and your organisation. 
Click here and book a free 30-minute consultation with me. This offer ends on 30th January 2022.

Sunday exercise

When we close our eyes, or even if our eyes are open and start to use our imagination - the Einstein brain - we have just activated one of the bigger centres of our brain, the occipital lobe that’s connected to the motor cortex. It’s also connected to the motivational circuit; the nucleus comes and releases that dopamine that makes you feel good and makes you want to act. So, if you visualise yourself achieving the goal, if you visualise yourself behaving in ways that match the new belief, even if you visualise the words or you take the words on a sheet of paper and you read them. 

 

Try it: Close your eyes, see it, and feel it, your brain will begin to create a mental movie with the words and as it creates a mental movie with the words that’s happening in your subconscious mind. And when you give the subconscious mind these instructions a couple of things happen because of the way the brain hierarchy works. Number one is survival; number two is safety and number three is energy conservation. When you do something consistently, it takes between 60 and 365 days of repetition to override an old habitual circuit. Therefore, if you visualise yourself achieving the goal, feeling the success you want to feel, seeing the belief on the screen of your mind, you are actually creating an artificial numeral network through the science of neuroplasticity. And since your brain wants to conserve energy, if you do this on a consistent basis, your brain will automatically set aside the old beliefs and replace them with new beliefs, and then you will have deliberately and consciously evolved yourself.

Take responsibility

As we near the end of the calendar year we’ll see many people setting goals both sales and personal goals for the New Year. Are your goals financial, physical, educational or career? Setting goals gives you both a long-term vision and a short-term motivation. It focuses your acquisition of knowledge and helps you to organise your time and resources so that you can make the most of your life. I think that they will abandon them within a couple of weeks, as most goals and resolutions are intentions and intentions don’t equal behaviours or achievements. Every one of us are in our current situation right now as a result of our life choices, behaviours, and habits.


By setting sharp, clearly defined goals, you can measure and take pride in the achievement of those goals, and you'll see forward progress in what might previously have seemed a long pointless grind. You will also raise your self-confidence, as you recognise your own ability and competence in achieving the goals that you've set. Contact me via e-mail when you ready to take responsibility and fulfil your goals like top-level athletes, successful businesspeople, and high achievers.

Never give up

Most salespersons are looking for the success strategy, but because of their psychology, for example, fears, worries, views about the economic situation, etc., are keeping them from maximising their capabilities. Usually when you think that you’re not good enough, in reality what’s holding you back is 80% psychology and 20% mechanics. Top salespersons think mostly about their goals and their priorities and how to achieve them. Top salespersons think about their actions and activities each day, they think about the number people they need to call, the number people they need to send proposals to each day, the number things they need to read and study, etc., etc. Always thinking about what they want!

When you think about what you want it makes you happy and positive, it makes you think that you are in control of your whole life. I think success comes from planning! If you truly want success, then do what top salespersons do – engage with an executive coach and develop a plan. Contact me via e-mail for 1-on-1 executive coaching.