Making New Years Goals "Stick"
Did you know 98% of all New Year’s resolutions fail?
Traditional goal setting doesn’t work out much better.

Stack the odds in your favor by incorporating these four simple ideas into your 2006 goal planning

1) Create Clarity. People often resolve to do things that are the conceptual idea they have attached to the thing they really want. For example: finding new ways to motivate employees is a good idea, but what is behind that idea? What is it that is really going on? Does the manager really want the employees to be more motivated or does he want the company to make more money, or reduce employee turnover, or improve morale? It could be any of these, yet the way he thinks that could happen is by better- motivated employees? He is saying and going for the wrong thing. The resolution should actually be to make 25% greater profits in 2006. The sub resolutions are things like 1) find ways to motivate employees 2) cut expenses by 10% 3) reduce turnover by 30%

2) Olympic Thinking. Once the resolution is made and clarity has been established, there has to be a deadline for that resolution to be complete. This deadline has to be controlled outside of the company or individual and has to happen whether the organization is ready or not. Just like the Olympics. If an athlete is training for the Olympics and they notice that they are not going to be ready, they can't call up the Olympic committee and say, "You know it looks like I may not be ready...can you just move my event back a couple of weeks?" This is not possible, so consequently the athletes are almost always ready for their events. In most businesses Olympic thinking doesn't exist and is the main reason resolutions don't get complete, goals, are not met and projects run over budget and miss the deadline.

3) Watching the Map. When people make resolutions, they say where they want to go, but are often unclear about where they are. If you are not clear where you are it is impossible to get were you want to go. For example, if I give you map of the United States and say, you can go anywhere in the continental US by car, where would you like to travel to? You choose San Diego, CA. Here is your map of the US, and you can clearly see San Diego, but you don't know where you are on the map. How long will it take you to get to San Diego? You might never make it. Now as soon as I say you are in Houston, Texas, how simple is it to find your way to San Diego? Pretty darn simple. It is virtually impossible to get where you want to go, if you don’t know where you are.

4) The Stretch. Research proves that making attainable goals actually decreases the likelihood of success. Stretch goals make things more interesting and challenging for people. Locke et al. (1981) examined the behavioral effects of goal-setting, concluding that 90% of laboratory and field studies involving specific and challenging goals led to higher performance than easy or no goals. In fact I believe the reason most goals are not attained is that they are not challenging enough!

The big secret about traditional goal setting is that it doesn’t work. If it did, more people would be achieving their goals, yet most people are not.
There is a huge difference between goal setting and goal achievement.
Try something different this year, try goal achievement. And if you need a little assistance, please consider attending the January 6th workshop. I promise you will hear something about goal achievement that you have never heard before!

Happy New Year!