David A. Fields Consulting Group Maybe you scanned your business bucket list this morning, or maybe you glanced at your consulting firm’s annual goals last Monday… or maybe not. Does it matter? Of course. Let’s talk about the right time to review your goals.
Is there a right time to be responsive to your clients? Yes: any time you’re working. Is there a right time to eat chocolate? Yes: any time you’re awake. Is there a right time to review your consulting firm’s long-term, strategic goals? Yes—but it’s tricky to figure out.
When it comes to the cadence of reviewing dreams, long-term goals, short-term goals, and smokin’ hot immediate-term fires, one rhythm doesn’t suit everyone.
Still, it may be helpful to see how other consultants and firms dance this timing tango. Therefore, I’ll share my team’s approach, but I’d like to hear how frequently you review your goals too. We’ll learn from each other.
(No doubt some highly-trained, project-management pros will chime in advice on proven processes such as scrums or scrambles or scribbles. I’m not versed in any of those… well, maybe in scribbles.)
First, a few observations:
- Long-term goals must be revisited, lest they be forgotten or crowded out by short term fires.
- If long-term goals are revisited too often, especially without meaningful progress between visits, their power to inspire excitement and action dissipates. Like the art on your wall, if you see it every day, you stop noticing it.
- A goal that appears unreasonably large, confusingly vague or downright daunting, can deter action.
- A goal that includes chocolate is more likely to be achieved.
- Small achievements accelerate progress toward large achievements
In keeping with those observations, my team’s goal horizons are daily, weekly, monthly, annually and epic dreams.
The answers to those questions define our list of priority projects for the month.
Finally, since our list of priority projects cascades down to the weekly conversations, after we define the priority projects for the quarter we also outline the progress we expect each of the next three months.
They key is setting those tempting dreams aside until the next quarterly review, at earliest. Great ideas will survive a short incubation period.
That’s our approach. In a nutshell, we revisit our dreams annually and our annual goals quarterly. Everything else is tactical implementation.
What’s your cadence for reviewing goals? If you’re an expert in a project management methodology, you’re bound to have a strong opinion. I look forward to reading it.
Text and images are © 2023 David A. Fields, all rights reserved.
Good advice as usual! For goals to be effective, they need to be internalized and believed emotionally and logically. That’s what makes them keep guiding behavior even when not in the forefront of consciousness. Goals that are too large can offer a convenient unconscious excuse for failure unless they are coupled with a suitable series of smaller, shorter-term goals that reliably lead to accomplishing the bigger goal. Going to the moon was a pretty big goal that got accomplished because it continued to provide overall motivation for all the many sub-goals that together enabled achievement.
An overarching, “part of something bigger” goal is a motivator for most people, and the space race of the 1960s is definitely a good example of that.
Your statement about goals being believed emotionally is interesting to me because strong emotions tend to be fleeting. That’s part of why I’ve observed the power of a goal to inspire excitement can diminish if it’s reviewed too frequently.
Great input, as always, Robin.
BTW, speaking of space, though I haven’t heard anything about it on the news today, this is the 60th anniversary of USSR’s launching Sputnik.
возгласы!
Great reminder David, and I like the structure you have. Very helpful. Thank you.
My pleasure, Scott. Let me know how you decide to set up the cadence for yourself and your firm, and how it works out.
Reminds me of Brian Moran’s “The 12 Week Year”, which is pretty much how I envisaged operating once I start getting clients.
That particular structure is not one I’m familiar with; however it has an intriguing title, and if it helps you keep your short- and long-term goals balanced, it’s a good system.
One nuance to consider…. In your case, you have a team which provides emotional encouragement, accountability, and ideas for when someone gets stuck. For solo entrepreneurs, it can be helpful to think through ways to accomplish these things without a formal “team” structure.
You make a fair point, Debbie, and I would suggest a couple of considerations:
First, even as a “solo entrepreneur” you should have a part-time administrative person on your team. At a minimum, that person is helping you keep your CRM up to date and handling administrivia like pulling together expense reports. When you review your daily and weekly goals, that person can be a help, too.
Second, the cadence described above works well if you’re on your own. The heart of this is less about the number of people and more about how often you’re reviewing short-and long-term goals. If it doesn’t work for you, though, I’d definitely like to here that and understand why.