Now that we’re midway through February, most New Years’ resolutions have faded into the background. Now, we’re working hard on not feeling guilty about it.
Why are goals so hard to keep? Lately, I’ve been reading The 4 Disciplines of Execution: Achieving Your Wildly Important Goals by Chris McChesney, Jim Nuling, and Sean Covey. The book addresses many of the problems with goal setting as well as the way to actually achieve your goals.
A few highlights from the book that really caught my attention:
Make your Wildly Important Goal (WIG) the focus. Too often we see a problem and several different ways to solve it. Pick one WIG, that will have the most effect on achieving the next step. And be specific about it: “I want to get from HERE to HERE by THIS DATE.”
Follow up and accountability – weekly meetings where you address the little things you can do each week to help achieve the big goal. This breaks it down into small things you can do/change to support your WIG. And when you meet again the next week, hold yourself and your team accountable. Did you do what you said? If not, you will do it this week and something else on top of it.
Don’t get lost in the “Whirlwind.” Our habits and daily tasks often make it difficult to take the next step, achieve our goals, because we get lost in the things we have to do each day. So schedule your time for accomplishing your WIG. Make sure it gets priority during that time. The Whirlwind of tasks will always be there, if you are making a change and accomplishing something new you need to do something new. Create time for it.
I highly recommend The 4 Disciplines of Execution: Achieving Your Wildly Important Goals for anyone in leadership within their company, as well as anyone looking to achieve the goals they make.