First Quarter 2010 is moving into the record books
You should be making progress on your goals and action steps based on the timelines you established in your goal planning late in 2009. How have you done so far? Read on to see what Marilyn discovered during her goal planning process.
(You can also see the cumulative results for all responses) |
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The Dilemma: Too many action steps with the same due date
Marilyn is an accounting professional in private practice. After two years in business, she reached the point most professionals and business owners reach every couple of years:
Marilyn was spending too much time working in the business and no time working on the business. She realized she needed help to take her business to the next level, and she contacted me for strategic planning assistance.
We reached the point in the goal setting phase where she put her action steps down on paper under each goal. She had 5 major goal cagetories, and each goal within her major categories fit the SMART goal requirements. She had her action steps all planned out with the date when the action step would be complete.
The problem was that about 40% of her action steps for all her goals were scheduled for completion on the same day.
That wasn't feasible. Marilyn is one person, she was spread pretty thin as it was, and there wasn't anyone she could delegate any duties to in support of her work on the issues in the action steps.
Does this sound familiar? |
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Has this ever happened to you?
It' similar to scheduling yourself to be 2 places at the same time. You just can't do it all.
Here is what Marilyn and I did. We sat down with pen and paper, wrote down the completion date, and then listed all the action steps Marilyn had planned. She evaluated the importance to her of each action step she'd created for that date and selected which ones were her priorities and which ones could be rescheduled for completion at a later date. |
