As a great sage once said (and I paraphrase), "if you want to learn, teach."  Over the last two years I can attest to the accuracy of that statement. It happened the other day in a client meeting and it was such an epiphany I felt the obligation to write about it.

I have become a great believer in setting goals. But I have to admit at times it has been hard to convince some hardened business owners that there is any benefit in doing so. I usually get pushback or halfhearted agreement when I suggest we need to start there to get clarity on where we want to go. I feel like the Rabbit in Alice in Wonderland.  Alice said she was lost and did not know which of the two roads to take. He asked "Where are you going", her reply was "I don't know", and his retort "Well either of the roads will take you there".

Many of the clients I have worked with fail to see the benefits of setting goals. Their experience, like mine in the past, is: "goals are nice but I got here without setting goals, I'm doing ok without them, I can't predict what the economy will do or what other factors I have no control over that will get in the way to me reaching them, etc., so why bother?"

As I said, I looked back on my career in corporate America and I never set any goals for myself. I told myself I did OK without them, why bother. When I left that world and started working with business owners I had to ask myself if it was so important for them then why did I succeed without goals? After a lot of contemplation it occurred to me. The CEO set my goals. It came down the ladder and if I met and exceeded their goals I was rewarded with more responsibility, more money, etc.

Guess what? No one is coming to set the goals for a business owner, they must do it themselves. Their employees don't know what they want or what they are supposed to do, so they need those goals passed down to them, like they were to me.

So if goals are so important how do I convince my clients to embrace the practice and be committed to setting and committing to them? Here is my case: