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Succeeding in your Business Goals

Succeeding in your Business Goals

Succeeding in your Business Goals

The most effective way to progress in business is to set goals. There are many circumstances behind a goal that is never achieved, and often the reason is centred around ineffective planning and a loss of motivation. The road to success is not always a smooth one, but there are a range of methods and strategies to stay on track and to keep motivated when things get difficult.

Remember Your “Why” & What Values Drive You

What is the outcome from achieving this goal? Always remember your why, write it down and display it where you can be frequently reminded, especially when you hit bumps along the road.  Also describe your values, what are the guard rails you will apply to get to your why.   Be acutely aware of your values, this will determine the pace and journey you take to get to your goal. 

Spread the Word

Publicly communicate the goal to ensure you have people to hold you accountable. Accountability is one of the more effective motivators. Set up a digital calendar where those involved in the project can track its progress, know their role and deadlines and access resources.

Use the Stairs

Use a staircase to map out the chronological actions that must be taken to bridge the gap between your now and success.  Break down your goal and determine small, measurable subgoals and celebrate each achievement. As an example, if your goal is to increase revenue by 10% in 12 months, the first step could be redeveloping a revised marketing campaign and launch it within 8 weeks.

What swimlane are you in, what swimlane are others in

When several individuals or teams are involved in working towards a goal, it is important that each of them are clear of their role, their swimlane! Regular briefings are necessary, particularly on large scale projects to reflect on what is and isn’t working, alter the path when necessary and track progress.

Identify the Resources Needed

When the goal is set, the journey to success is mapped out be very clear on the skills required to bring the outcome to life, identify gaps and deal to them early.  Align team with similar or same values. 

Stick to your Deadlines.

Create a realistic timeline, and stick to it.  Be very clear what priorities come before this activity if there are constraints, be clear on where this activity sits within your overall priorities.

Celebrate the successes, and learnings as well.

Reward yourself and your team each time a target is met within the deadline and also when there has been a significant learning. 

Reflect and Revise Along the way.

It is rare to have a completely seamless journey to success in anything we do, being agile, creating a great team dynamic to reflect, revise, regularly, make it part of your weekly ways of working.  Recognise when something isn’t working and needs to be changed – not take weeks or days, address when the issue is identified.

Listen to those around you, even those you dont align to

Listening is a core skill for success, good, bad, indifferent.  Listen to between the lines, listen to the detractors, listen to the advocates.  Form your own opinion after listening. 

Imagine the feeling, the experiences you and others will have when the goal or outcome is realised.  Is the excitement of the goal larger than any fear you have to achieve it?  

If you have a fear that is greater than the feeling of excitement to realise the goal – address that fear now or you will never realise your goal. 

Love Life  Love YOUR Life

Ferne Eliz King

About Ferne

Ferne is globally recognised and called upon for quickly accelerating complex change to achieve business strategies.  Translating strategies to actionable plans, prioritisation of those actions, engagement from the right people, bringing business architecture to life or your life plan if individual and in many cases driving the change as a program director.  The bottom line is Ferne accelerates businesses or individuals to achieve outcomes and enabling that is her passion.

What's the consequence if you take no action?

“If you do the same thing today as yesterday, your tomorrow will be the same as today”.  Ferne Eliz King

Want To Learn More?

Book a free 15 min call and see how Ferne can help you accelerate your aspirations for you or your business.

9 things to keep in mind as you go about your day

9 things to keep in mind as you go about your day

9 things to keep in mind as you go about your day

 

Tip One: Focus on what you do with your time, not what others do – do not compare !  Your mind will never let you win !

Tip Two: Keep a rough diary for a week or minimum of three days to know what you do with your time, and then decide what / where you will change

Tip Three: create your own one pager personalised diary to track where you want to / should spend your time each day.  Hand write this for a week, then digitise it on computer or device

Tip Four: do something every day to take a step towards your imaginable future.   EVERY day to take a step , take an action

Tip Five: do not reward yourself throughout your day, do not say .. after the next task i will reward myself and go to the fridge!! do not reward yourself until the end of the day.. and ONLY reward yourself if you actually achieve your goals for the day

Tip Six: Working longer hours does not create productivity;  a good balance of sleep, nutrition, mindfulness, exercise, happy activities and striving for something larger than ourselves and mixing in some work creates productivity – schedule in your day journalling, sleep, eating times, meditation, exercise, something to put a smile on your face .. THEN work time – with regular breaks.

Tip Seven: find ways to automate and consolidate!  digital transformation …

Tip Eight: break your weekly time schedule into problems you are solving for, this quite often alters the tasks and the priorities you give them … figure out what are your biggest three problems causing you stress or worry, then plan the actions to resolve or mitigate as a priority.

Tip Nine: only spend 20 minutes maximum a day ‘surfing’ social media.  Dont look at your phone or computer before you are ‘ready’ for the day.  Dont look at your phone or devices for the hour before going to bed.

I have my ups and downs of being at home, I try to be careful of the language I use.  I am not ‘stuck at home’, I am ‘safe at home’.  I am not ‘floundering and figuring out how to get through a day’  I am ‘flourishing at figuring new and altered ways to find my new comfort’  …
BUT …
what the heck is happening to my time management?

I am saving hours of travel not having to get myself and my daughter to where we need to be each day. But somehow, I seem to have LESS time. Somehow, I have started to fall behind on all my to-do lists.

Before COVID-19 hit I was working part time at the office and part time at home as well as running an on line business as well as winding up a tiny house design and build company, managing a house, a child, a parent who lives independantly with us …  I was managing it all brilliantly.

When the restrictions began, I was quietly looking forward to having so much extra time on my hands each day, my house will be spotless, our dinner will be extravagant, I will be producing some of my best work and I will still have time leftover to focus on my other ventures. Sure my 6 year old will be home, but my mother lives on the property and she will be able to help with home schooling, besides I will be saving myself an hour a day just from not having to do the school runs and nearly 2.5 hours a day with work travel .. there is 3.5 hours saved right there!

Day one, somehow it was lunchtime… I had given up on home schooling for the day (No judgement, I’m sure I am not the only one.. being a teacher is tough!), I had half an unloaded dishwasher, I had no idea what we were doing for dinner, and besides from checking some emails I had only done about 10 minutes of work!! Oh, and the house was far from spotless thanks to my 6 year old hurricane getting around the place.

Where did the morning go?? What do I have to show for it?? And about 1pm I started role playing the conversation that was going to occur when my partner got home about how much I had (not) got done in the day!

Ok, Ferne, not the best start, sit down and have some lunch, call in your mum for some ‘Nanna Duties’ then get stuck into it… No distractions! But then the phone rings (I didn’t answer her last call; I’ll have a quick 10 minute chat…who was i kidding … 40mins later I’m back into it). But then the washing machine sings, but I am ignoring it… (or am I? It wont take long to hang out, and I need time to think through my response to this problem anyway).. And then it is 9:30pm, we had meat and veg for dinner, the house is quiet (but not clean), I am the only one awake, and I will be for the next few hours at least while I get this work done.. And I promise myself that tomorrow I will be more organised, more disciplined, no excuse!! Yet, I continued doing the same thing every day that week.

Clearly what I was doing wasn’t working for me and I had to change my strategy. The truth is I have never been in this situation before, so I needed to come up with a unique approach. Yes, discipline is part of it, but it is not the whole solution. The bottom line is at home we are distracted by our personal to-do lists because everything that we would not give a second thought about in the office is now at our fingertips at home (and there is no shame in wanting to get ahead so there is more time for leisure at the end of the day).

So here is what I realised…

If I start my ‘tasks’ at the time I usually leave for work and finish ‘tasks’ at the time I would arrive home I am giving myself easily an extra two hours of ‘to do’ time.

I spend 5 minutes in the morning creating a list of all my chores and all my tasks for work, and the time that it will take to complete them- rechecking each morning what i need to carry over from the day prior and readjust for the week, or what i did in advance of expectation.

I prioritise tasks and plan the day so I do a task for work – and make sure I do the tasks I dont like FIRST , followed by a 5 minute ‘break’ where I will do a house chore.

I am working faster to try and keep up with my daily schedule. When things go back to “something different than today” I will continue to beat the clock to do my housework as I now realise I waste way too much time dawdling on mundane tasks that I could do quickly and free up time for myself.   Every time I save 5 minutes I spend that extra 5 min journalling or doing something for ME !

Ferne Eliz King

About Ferne

Ferne is globally recognised and called upon for quickly accelerating complex change to achieve business strategies.  Translating strategies to actionable plans, prioritisation of those actions, engagement from the right people, bringing business architecture to life or your life plan if individual and in many cases driving the change as a program director.  The bottom line is Ferne accelerates businesses or individuals to achieve outcomes and enabling that is her passion.

What's the consequence if you take no action?

“If you do the same thing today as yesterday, your tomorrow will be the same as today”.  Ferne Eliz King

Want To Learn More?

Book a free 15 min call and see how Ferne can help you accelerate your aspirations for you or your business.