Balance Your Portfolio of Goals

How many goals do you have?

Some days I have too many to count. It's easy to lose track of how many goals I'm working on at any given time. How about you?

It's better when we keep a definitive list. It's easier to track and complete those goals when we know what they are and when they are right in front of us every day.

The real advantage to keeping a careful watch on how many goals we have is to avoid holding onto competing goals. When we have goals that not only oppose each other (by competing for time, resources, attention) but distract us then we are not at our optimal best. How can we complete two goals that compete with each other?

Setting goals that compete with each other is not a formula for success.

When it happens, spot it, fix it, and move on. Each and every goal should support our overall vision or mission. When they don't, they might compete with each other -- and with our focus of attention.

Do you have any competing goals? How can you reconcile that?

-- Doug Smith

Front Range Leadership: High Performance Leadership Training

doug smith training: how to achieve your goals

Comments

Practice Re-centering

It's fairly easy to get pushed off-center, which makes regular practice at re-centering essential. How do you re-center? What's your favorite way to get back on track, calm your inner wildness and focus? Deep breathes? Meditation? Long walks? Quiet focused attention? Whatever works, do that. Why not practice right now? -- doug smith

Your Best

When are you at your best? It's probably not when things are the easiest. It could be when you are wrestling with a problem and use your skills and talents to forge a fabulous solution. Problems give you the platform to promote your best you. Faced with a problem, give it your best. -- doug smith

Gain That Personal Input

Do you like it when other people make decisions for you? Me, either -- and neither do the people on your team. That's all the more true about decisions that become, or feel like, rules. Our inner rebel will rise. A rule we didn't make seems much easier to break. If you want your team to keep certain rules, first find out how they feel about those rules. -- doug smith

Leveraging Shared Problems

As frustrating as it is, some people don't care about your problem until you make it their problem, too. But you don't have to manipulate them into it. Talk about it. Share your concerns. Find the connections and you'll also find their investment. Once they are in, collaboration is far more likely. -- doug smith

Broken Trust?

It hurts when a trust has been broken. It might even feel unforgivable. It should be possible for someone who has broken trust to rebuild it -- but it won't be fast, and it won't be easy. When in doubt, for all you are worth, maintain that trust. -- doug smith

Calm

A technician may criticize your technique but never your heart, never your intention, never your joy. Hear the feedback from your own place of calm. -- doug smith

No Hiding

We can't hide from a problem. It will find us. Every single time. -- doug smith

Beyond Production

The trouble with production quotas is that they cause people to do anything necessary to meet them. Cheat. Lie. Cover-up. Bend the rules. Break the rules...if the stakes are high enough and the pressure is strong enough people may feel forced into doing whatever it takes to win. That's not winning. Leaders do need to measure success and we do need to identify key activities on the path to that success, but we must constantly be careful about the means as well as the ends. How strong is your focus on quality? How committed are you to integrity? Are people on your team rewarded for supporting the team? The problem with competition is that someone always loses. It does not need to be your team. -- doug smith

Can You Go Beyond?

Beyond the present solutions there are even better solutions to nearly every problem. -- doug smith

Consider The Impact

Has anyone ever solved a problem in a way that made things worse for you? Changes in job sites, changes in processes, software updates, family squabbles...with good intentions people rush solutions into play that seem to work for some, and yet badly disappoint others. We can do better than that. Think thru those solutions before launching that change. Get help from as many people as possible who will be impacted by that change. Until you consider the impact of your problem's solution on other people you haven't really considered that solution enough. -- doug smith

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