I’m guessing you’re working toward some sort of goal right now. Whether that be increasing your revenue, growing your email list, or launching a free content strategy guide, it’s important to have a plan in place for what to do when things don’t go as planned.
Because things don’t always go as planned!
The Proactive Review
The very best review is tracking your progress before your goal deadline. By being proactive, if you’re off track you can adjust your strategy.
For example let’s say you have a goal to improve retention of your membership subscription by 20% this calendar year. As we come into June you’ve hit a ceiling and that goal looks unachievable. In order to hit your target you could:
- engage a coach specialising in membership
- improve your exit email sequence to include a survey
- look at the retention incentives that have worked in the past
In tracking your progress you have plenty of time to make the changes needed to meet your goal.
The Reactive Review
Perhaps you’ve tried some of the actions above and despite your best efforts, you still didn’t achieve your goal.
If we’re putting our fractional integrator hats on we’d use a couple of the EOS tools to review the results. At our next Level 10 leadership meeting we’d IDS (Identify, Discuss, Solve) the issue, resulting in actions to ensure our next goals are met.
Reviewing with your team is more effective, but even if you’re a team of one, here’s some steps you can take:
Step 1: With a blank piece of paper (says me who loves the act of physically writing thoughts down) write down all the reasons why you didn’t achieve your goal. Brain dump time.
Step 2: For each of these reasons write a corresponding solution.
Common reasons for not achieving goals are:
- Lack of resources
- The goal has lost relevancy
- No accountability
- Too many goals
- The goals are too big
- No measurement or ‘SMART’ element
Solutions to these could be:
- Outsourcing or delegating some of the tasks
- What changed to reduce relevancy
- Find someone to hold you accountable (and keep you focused)
- Next time you set goals, set fewer or use stretch goals
- Be realistic, look at your resources before defining the scope of your goal
- Be SMART!
One Action Today
Think about your most important goal right now. Are you on track?
If not, sit down and review where you’re at. What needs to change to get back on track?
