Be careful what you wish for… about setting goals and have success June 1, 2009
Posted by ivankamenken in business.Tags: business, goal, success, target
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Today I flew Business Class to Hong Kong. For some people that is not a big deal, but for me it is! A few years ago I set myself a goal of flying business class before the age of 40, but had no idea that this was really achievable.
Now – you have to remember that I am Dutch, so by default I am very sceptical about spending money on ‘frivolous things’. I can’t help it… it’s in my genes!! So when I set this goal for myself it was very ‘out there’…. not something that would be easy to achieve, and most people who know me well would argue that it was a ridiculous goal to set as I would NEVER achieve it! But today, about 14 months later and 1 week before my 39th birthday here I am… sitting in Business Class flying to Hong Kong.
So what happened? Well – a couple of things really…
- I verbalised the goal and talked about it to other people
- I figured out the type of activities I needed to do to achieve the goal.
- I stuck with it and chipped away at it… one frequent flyer point at the time… !
- I set myself the goal but that was not enough! I needed to put it into an action plan.
About 14 months ago I would only dream of flying Business Class and hope that it would happen someday. But like my mentor always says: “Hope is NOT a strategy”
So I signed up for a frequent flyer program and started collecting points towards upgrades etc. And now I have my first upgrade.. I achieved my goal! One year and one week ahead of schedule!!! So, what can we take away from this? Well, apart from signing up for a frequent flyer program… it is very important to write our goals down. What is it that we want to achieve? Just talking about it isn’t enough.. WRITE IT DOWN! For some weird reason that is a lot more powerful. Write down your personal goals for the next 12 months… your business goals or your career goals…
Once you’ve written them down you can start talking about it with other people to shape the way you want to achieve your goal (notice that I no longer talk about a dream?!?! A dream doesn’t have an action plan…. goals do!) This stage is important as it will help you identify what you will need to do to make it happen.. what actions do you need to take? What activities and habits do you need to start? Now that you know what you need to do, the hard work is done.. all there is left is simply following your action plan! One day at a time.. .do the little baby steps.
One day you will get there.. believe me! It works for me…
But remember: ”BE CAREFULL WHAT YOU WISH FOR!”
The one and only bullet proof way to success in business November 19, 2008
Posted by ivankamenken in business.Tags: business, discipline, KPI, measure, success, target
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Running a business is really very simple… in theory! You have a unique product or service (or a unique delivery mechanism of an existing product or service), and you set your targets and your goals for the year.
But then what?! Initially you do all the work yourself and the business is going really well… after a period of time you need more ‘hands and feet’ so you start employing staff. This is where most small organisations struggle (and believe me… I’ve been there!)
You expect the staff members to perform the same activities at the same level of passion and intensity as you do… but because everybody is busy you don’t really have a bulletproof system for tracking and measuring KPIs and to keep your people accountable…. and that is where things start to slide a little.
So how do you guarantee success in business? MEASURE EVERYTHING!
- Measure the time spent on certain activities
- Measure the amount of client contacts
- Measure the number of complaints and the number of positive testimonials
- Measure returning customers
- Measure close rates
- Measure the amount of ingoing vs. the amount of outgoing phone-calls
- Measure the number of leads per source (e.g. ad in the paper, Internet, email, walk in etc.)
Be very vigilant of this and measure everything that you can measure (as long as it makes sense) in relation to your target and goal. And then…. PUBLISH the measures! Have them visible in the company so everybody can see them and people start to ask each other about their targets and KPI’s.
Business is a contact sport, and an endurance sport. You need to measure where you are now, where you want to be and how you’re going to get there? This is the only way you have visibility of the path you’re taking and a surefire way to success!
But yes – it is painful. It takes a lot of guts to do this AND to keep everybody in the company accountable. Last week I attended a presentation on effective execution and the speaker started with the following quote:
” There are two types of pain in life, the pain of discipline and the pain of regret.”
I think I would rather live with the pain of discipline… how about you?!
To do….. must be done August 15, 2008
Posted by ivankamenken in Uncategorized.Tags: goal, target, time management, todo
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Don’t you find that your TODO list keeps growing and growing? I know mine does… and I noticed that for a lot of people in my office the same was true.
Every day we start with a TODO list, only to find that by the end of the day most things are still on the list – and then some!
I think this might have something to do with how our brain works… I am no scientist or academic scholar, but I think that our brain tricks us into this false sense of security “it’s OK that you haven’t done this task yet, after all – it’s a TODO… it’s to be done sometimes in the future… not necessarily today”
My brain tells me this most of the time! (nasty little thing) so I decided to change the rules of the game. Not just for me but for everybody in the company:
Every day during our huddle we tell each other what we are working on and what our roadblocks are and we finish with one (1) thing that MUST BE DONE before the end of this working day. And the next day we tick it off the list. Did you do your ‘must be done’ yesterday? If not – why not? what happened? I thought it was a MUST be done…
This little game of changing semantics makes us focus on the one thing that is more important than anything else. I MUST finish this today to stay on track to achieve my target for today/this week/month/quarter/ year
It makes us think about the steps that are needed to stay on track and the things that need to be finished to achieve our goals.
It also stops the brain from playing games with me – every time it tries to tell me that it’s OK to procrastinate I say back to it: NO it is not a TODO… it’s a MUST be done today!
And you know what? It works!
Enjoy achieving your goals today – I know I am…
Ivanka
