It’s that time of year in my world. Nearing the fiscal year end, we are in the throes of performance reviews and setting goals for 2020. I’ve always found this time of year to be both stressful and invigorating. Similar to New Years Resolutions, it a time to reflect on the things we did and didn’t do, accomplishments and failures, things we did well and could have done better.
It’s also a time to set new goals for ourselves. I’ve always had a love hate relationship with goals. They’re important to understand where you’re going, but can also be futile if you work in an ever changing environment. Looking back, more often than not, what we started the year with looked nothing like how the year ended.
In the start up world – if you’re a founder or leader, unless you have tremendous discipline, you are riding the wave of everyday chaos and rarely have the time to reflect – for better or worse.
All said, I believe in goals although I tend to set out with too many. This is where models like Big Rocks come in handy. We also know about OKRs (Objectives, Key Results) and SMART (specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and time bound) goals. The latter – SMART goals – can devolve pretty quickly to a meaningless task list.
So how do you actually create ambitious meaningful goals? Start at the end. Imagine yourself at the end of this year. What did you do that your proud of? Start there and use the SMART method to articulate the steps to follow.
In all of this remember – don’t let the attainable get in the way of the ambitious.
The Objective Co 