By Toby Dahm, Senior Vice President, Hennessey Capital

How often have you heard the statement "If you don't have goals, how will you know if you are succeeding?"  So each year, we create a list of goals that we feel will satisfy our boss, our shareholders, or some other outside entity, or perhaps, even ourselves.  Often, these goals do not drive us.  We put them in a drawer and do our best to move our business forward with little thought to them, until our performance appraisal approaches and we dust them off.
 

Often, whether or not we achieve our goals has little bearing on our career satisfaction.  If we meet them and receive a reward, the joy tends to be fleeting.  If we miss them, we are quite adept at rationalizing the miss.  Does this remind you of your New Year's resolution?  Gyms are already starting to see the annual fall off, and by mid February, they will be back to their core of dedicated regulars.  The uncommitted New Year's resolvers will be back on the couch.

For a goal to have real meaning, it must stem from your dreams.  While this sounds fanciful, it is actually very fundamental.  Webster's defines a dream as "a strongly desired goal or purpose."  When your dream is in alignment with the objective of your business, it creates a powerful opportunity.  If your goal stems from your dream, you will stick with it and see it through.  One of my dreams is to see Hennessey Capital expand its strong regional reputation to one of national prominence.  To bring that dream to life requires that my goals include activities, such as participating in prominent national organizations, forging relationships with industry leaders that have national credibility, and pursuing opportunities to gain national exposure.

One obstacle to advancing our goals is the way we use our time.  Contrary to the fallacy we embrace, time is plentiful.  There are 168 hours in every week at our disposal.  What we choose to do with them will determine whether we achieve our goals and realize our dreams.  What throws us off are distractions; Things that seem important or valuable, but which don't move us toward our goal.

My personal trap is information.  I am inundated with newsletters and articles that I feel compelled to read and digest so that I can be as well informed as possible.  It seems innocent enough at the time; however this habit has a huge cost.  If I spend an hour a day sifting through this material (I'm embarrassed to admit it's probably more), that is five hours during a work week that I have not been working toward my goals.  This doesn't count the time that I have lost focus and have had to re-gain my momentum.  Think about how much you accomplish when you work on a weekend or come in before the "noise" of the day begins.

Another obstacle we face is fear of failure.  Our culture places great value on winning and a huge stigma on losing.  "What a loser!" is not a term of endearment.  Yet, history books are filled with heroes who suffered numerous setbacks before they realized their dreams.  If Henry Ford had let his early failures dissuade him, we would not be the nation we are today.

I would venture that well reasoned perseverance is a much greater virtue than being successful.  We often imagine the consequences of failing to be much worse than they actually are.  I am not advocating that you pursue your goals with reckless abandon, but rather that you persevere in the pursuit of them.  Obstacles will occur, and to succeed, you will need to go over them, around them, or bust through them.

One of my favorite quotes is from Teddy Roosevelt, who stated, "It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better.  The credit belongs to the man in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly...who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself in a worthy cause, who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who have never known neither victory nor defeat."

Make 2011 the year that you declare your true goals and pursue them courageously. 

One of the accepted rules of 21st century managers is that we must delegate. Empower your troops closest to the customer to make crucial decisions. Give them the chance to show what they've got.

But I wonder if we sometimes overdo this wise advice, expecting that redirecting a job is as easy as changing the channel with a remote. Are we setting up middle managers for failure when we hold them accountable for decisions they aren't prepared to make? Read More from Bnet.com